[Health-economics of oncology care: changes in hospital bed capacity]

The aim of our study was to analyze the effect of hospital bed reforms on April 1, 2007 in Hungary, with special respect to the changes of acute care cancer beds. Data were derived from the database of the National Health Insurance Fund Administration (OEP). We identified cancer care hospital capacities (beds) with the following financial codes: code nr. 12 (oncology), code nr. 24 (radiotherapy) and code nr. 28 (hematology). We analyzed the changes of these beds before and after the reform. The total number of acute care hospital beds decreased by 25.7%, while in the field of cancer care beds we found different trends. The number of hospital beds for oncology care and hematology care decreased by 11.4% and 11.1%, respectively. The number of hospital beds for radiotherapy departments even increased by 16.3%. We did not find any changes in regional inequalities. We can conclude that during the hospital bed reform in 2007, the number of oncology and hematology care beds decreased less than the total number of acute care hospital beds, and the number of beds for radiotherapy even increased, without significantly affecting the regional inequalities.