Page 2094 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 June 2015
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A bed is an item of furniture that provides accommodation for patients who have been admitted through formal hospital admission processes, such as a bed on a general hospital ward; a chair in a single location that accommodates a person during their admission, such as for renal dialysis; a day surgery bed used for people waiting for surgery; or a trolley that is moved to different locations during a person’s stay, for example where patients move from a same-day ward into a procedure room for a service such as an endoscopy and then into a recovery area.
An overnight inpatient bed is one where patients can be accommodated overnight in hospital. ACT Health does not count beds, chairs or trolleys used for non-admitted services, such as outpatient services, in a hospital bed count.
A place in a day service refers to a person’s place in a day service program and not to the physical space or spaces in which they will receive care and treatment. It is intended that people coming to a day service will be formally admitted to a place at the hospital as a day patient and will attend for half or full-day programs for an identified number of sessions each week throughout their program. Day service patients will not occupy a traditional hospital bed. Their program of treatment and therapy might be conducted in a gym, the hydrotherapy pool or consultation rooms, or a combination of these spaces.
Associate Professor Christopher Poulos defines a day hospital, which would be:
… used for patients undergoing a program of rehabilitation care (including geriatric rehabilitation where the attending medical officer is a geriatrician) where the primary focus is on assessment of function and on therapy to improve function and where this is able to be delivered in a non-inpatient setting. Patients within these day hospital programs will mostly be classified as the “rehabilitation” type (whether under the care of a rehabilitation physician or geriatrician), but some may be more appropriately classified as the “GEM” type, depending on the primary purpose of the day hospital admission. Day hospital programs can be either full or half-day programs.
ACT Health has decided to use the term “day service” rather than “day hospital” to focus on the ambulatory nature of the service.
The nationally agreed methodology adopted for the national partnership agreement for improving public hospitals in 2011 identified conversion factors for converting non-admitted or ambulatory services to bed day equivalents for measuring performance under the national partnership agreement. This methodology identified 2.5 same-day admissions, in the context of a day service as planned for the University of Canberra public hospital to be equivalent to one overnight inpatient bed. It should be noted, however, that this terminology and methodology was primarily developed only for funding purposes.
The University of Canberra public hospital will have a combination of admitted overnight inpatients, admitted patients in the day service as well as additional outpatient services.
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