The total number of hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants.
Calculation
The total number of hospital beds in a given calendar year by 31 December, per 100,000 inhabitants (end of year population). Total hospital beds are all hospital beds which are regularly maintained and staffed and immediately available for the care of admitted patients. Both occupied and unoccupied beds in general hospitals, mental health and substance abuse hospitals and other specialty hospitals are included. Definitions applied in the calculation of this indicator are in line with the ICHA-HP classification of providers of health care of the System of Health Accounts (see references).
Relevant dimensions and subgroups
Calendar year
Country
Region (according to ISARE recommendations; see data availability)
Type of facility; curative care beds in hospitals, psychiatric care beds in hospitals, long-term care beds (excluding psychiatric) in hospitals
Health care sector; public, private (see data availability)
Preferred data type and data source
Preferred data type
Administrative sources
Preferred data source
Eurostat
Data availability
Annual data are available for the EU-27, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland as of 1985. For many countries data are also available for the years 1970 and 1980. For some countries the time series are incomplete. Data are available by type of facility; availability of data on curative and psychiatric beds is good. Several countries however do not provide (or do not regularly provide) data on long-term care beds. Data by health care sector are not available. Data by region are available in Eurostat (NUTS II level); for most countries as of 1993. The ISARE project on regional data has collected data on hospital beds (number of hospital beds per 100,000 population).
Data periodicity
Data are being updated annually. Eurostat asks Member States to deliver the data for year N at N + 18 months, but some Member States have difficulties with this time table and deliver the data at their earliest convenience.
Rationale
Data on health care resources form a major element of public health information as they describe the capacities available for different types of health care provision. The quantity and quality of health care services provided and the division of work established between the different institutions are a subject of ongoing debate in all countries. Sustainability – continuously providing the necessary monetary and personal resources needed – and meeting the challenges of ageing societies are the primary perspectives used when analysing and using these data.
Remarks
The Eurostat data on hospital are not fully harmonised with regard to the reference period; some countries provide annual averages rather than end of year estimates. See references (annex describing original sources in the Member States) for more details. However, the reference period is not described for all countries in the Annex.
Next to hospital beds (HP.1), the System of Health Account also defines beds in nursing and residential care facilities (HP.2). These are available beds for people requiring ongoing health and nursing care due to chronic impairments and a reduced degree of independence in activities of daily living (ADL) in establishments primarily engaged in providing residential care combined with nursing, supervision or other types of care as required by the residents. The care provided can be a mix of health and social services. Publication of HP.2 data is currently being prepared by Eurostat. ECHIM only uses HP.1 beds for the definition of this indicator, as HP.1 beds are better comparable across Member States than HP.2 beds.
The adequacy of the number of beds in relation to the population is an issue that should be evaluated in a framework of comprehensive analysis along with other indicators of health care services structure and functioning. A decreasing trend in the number of hospital beds per inhabitant does not indicate necessarily a loss of resources but can also reflect a change in the organisation of producing health services.
As of 2010 Eurostat, OECD and WHO-Europe carry out a joint data collection in the field of health care non expenditure (human and physical resources). Publication of the (meta)data is expected shortly).
Definition
