The ebbs and flows of changing acute bed capacity delays

This case study provides a summary of changes in acute hospital bed delays that have occurred over a 4-year period as identified through a Capacity Audit process.

Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) designed a Capacity Audit process and tool that provides a systematic method to evaluate factors limiting access to inpatient bed capacity. The aim of the audit is to improve understanding of bed capacity by identifying key causes of delay for hospital inpatients and quantify the most frequent causes of blocked bed capacity. This can then be used to underpin targeted improvement work. The Capacity Audit has been undertaken at the RAH over three cycles.

The Capacity Audit involves a survey of every open and staffed bed, identifying how the bed is being used: for acute care or treatment, if there was a delay to the patient for discharge, or if the bed was unavailable. The first and second cycle of the audit (2007-2008) involved a twice-daily survey over a 2-week period and the third audit cycle in 2010 occurred once daily for 1 week.

On average, 620 beds were surveyed daily with an audit compliance rate ranging from 85-97%. This process has revealed almost 75% of beds are used positively for care. Of the remaining 25% of hidden capacity identified, non-clinical discharge delays account for 10% of total beds surveyed. Waiting for post-acute beds has consistently remained the main cause of acute bed delay.

The Capacity Audit process and tool has been used to track progress, trends and change resulting from service improvement efforts, and to provide the evidence to commence strategies to reduce the hidden capacity issues. This case study has shown that whilst overall bed stock usage for positive care has not changed significantly there are various ebbs and flows over time in relation to the reasons for bed delays.