In less than ten years, a catastrophe is expected to strike US hospitals, causing hundreds of thousands of people to die needlessly, according to experts.

A thorough analysis of the US healthcare system reveals that hospital occupancy in the US is on the brink of disaster.

As early as 2032, experts predict a chronic hospital bed deficit.

The average hospital occupancy rate in the country was 64% in the ten years prior to the Covid epidemic.

However, the national average for hospital occupancy since the pandemic is now 75%, which is 11 percentage points more than the prior norm.

Additionally, academics are concerned that in the upcoming years, occupancy rates might easily rise by an additional 10 percentage points, if not more.

Many people believe that a bed shortage occurs when the national hospital occupancy rate is 85 percent for regular hospital beds that are not ICU-level.

This ultimately results in prescription mistakes, excessively lengthy ER wait times, and other unfavorable hospital events.

The CDC reports that 12,000 extra fatalities occur two weeks after the national ICU occupancy rate reaches 75%.

Dr Richard Leuchter, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA and the study’s lead investigator, says if the US was to sustain a national hospital occupancy of 85 percent or greater, “it is likely that we would see tens to hundreds of thousands of excess American deaths each year.” 

Researchers used CDC data to gather hospital occupancy indicators from almost all US hospitals between August 2, 2020, and April 27, 2024, for their study, which was published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

They then modeled potential hospital occupancy scenarios through 2035 by combining these data with official population predictions from the US Census Bureau and national hospitalization rates.

The number of patients divided by the number of available beds is the hospital occupancy rate.

In essence, this displays the proportion of beds that are occupied at any one moment. Over time, the researchers looked at both of these criteria.

They discovered that a 16 percent decrease in hospital beds, rather than an increase in hospitalizations, has been the main driver of the rise in hospital occupancy.

Between the years before and after the epidemic, the number of in-patients has stayed largely constant.

A national hospital occupancy of 75 percent is dangerously close to a bed shortage, the researchers say, because it “does not provide enough of a buffer against factors such as daily bed turnover, seasonal fluctuations in hospitalizations and unexpected surges.” 

The authors estimated the number of anticipated hospitalizations for each year between 2025 and 2035 in order to simulate future hospital capacity.

They factored in the anticipated increase in patients brought on by the aging of the US population.

According to their findings, the average national hospital occupancy rate for adult hospital beds could reach 85% by 2032 if the hospitalization rate and the number of staffed hospital beds remain unchanged.

According to the experts, more work needs to be done to stop hospital closures and bankruptcy in order to prevent a hospital bed crisis.

They say this can be done “partly by revamping hospital reimbursement schemes and regulating private equity involvement in health care, addressing factors driving staffing shortages such as provider burnout, and changing policy to expand the pipelines of health care professionals.”

According to Dr. Leuchter, the government’s recent decision to suspend all new international nursing permits in June 2024 exacerbated the workforce shortage.

Although he claims that his study’s goal was not to find out why the number of staffed hospital beds has decreased, other research indicates that the sector may be experiencing a staffing shortage.

A trend of hospital closures that are “partially driven by the practice of private equity firms purchasing hospitals and effectively selling them for parts” is another aspect he cites.

According to a survey by healthcare advisory firm Chartis, half of US rural hospitals were losing money, resulting in even greater financial strains, and 418 rural hospitals were at risk of closing in 2024.

According to a different analysis conducted for the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR), Texas was the state most likely to experience hospital closures, with 28 institutions (18%) at risk of immediate closure and 75 rural hospitals (47%) scheduled to close.

An estimated 60 million Americans depend on the 2,200 rural hospitals in the US for their basic medical needs.

According to the report, hospitals in rural areas are losing money on patient care because private insurance plans pay them less than what it costs to treat patients. This is the main reason why hospitals are in danger of closing.

Additionally, they suffer financial losses from Medicaid and uninsured patients.