The Function of Bed Management in Pandemic Times—A Case Study of Reaction Time and Bed Reconversion

The last decade was characterized by the reduction in hospital beds throughout Europe. When facing the COVID pandemic, this has been an issue of major importance as hospitals were seriously overloaded with an unexpected growth in demand. The dichotomy formed by the scarcity of beds and the need for acute care was handled by the Bed Management (BM) function. This case study explores how BM was able to help the solidness of the healthcare system, managing hospital beds at best and recruiting others in different settings as intermediate care in a large Local Health Authority (LHA) in central Italy. Administrative data show how the provision of appropriate care was achieved by recruiting approximately 500 beds belonging to private healthcare facilities affiliated with the regional healthcare system and exercising the best BM function. The ability of the system to absorb the extra demand caused by COVID was made possible by using intermediate care beds, which were allowed to stretch the logistic boundaries of the hospitals, and by the promptness of Bed Management in converting beds into COVID beds and reconverting them, and by the timely management of internal patient logistics, thus creating space according to the healthcare demands.