ICU Beds Utilization Pattern

ICU beds are expensive and critical resources in modern healthcare. Its under provision would jeopardise the quality of healthcare, while its over provision overburden the limited resources. However, there is no hard and fast rule on what is the optimal number of ICU beds for a given population. Hong Kong has around 3.5 ICU beds per 100,000 population, which is on the low side when compared with other developed countries. As such, the occupancy rate of ICU beds is always high in Hong Kong. A native view of the occupancy rate is to see whether an ICU is "busy" or not. However, it is an oversimplified view and may not be accurate. Is there any other insight we could gain from the ICU utilisation data? In the presentation, the current ICU bed utilisation data of Hong Kong will be reviewed. Then, a few examples on how other uses of the utilisation data will be discussed: determining the number of required isolation room in an ICU expansion project; demonstrating the impact of new service commissioning on the availability of ICU service to other users. Lastly, a method of resampling of the ICU utilisation data would be introduced. With this method, one could estimate the strain of ICU beds with minimal assumptions. When resampling is applied to data from local ICUs, the results showed that triage pressure existed to a varying degree.