Healthcare Emergency Preparedness: Hospital Capacity
This page provides a glance at overall hospital capacity in Wisconsin. It shows:
- The activity of new patient admissions held in emergency departments (ED) due to lack of an inpatient bed.
- Adult and pediatric staffed inpatient beds that are occupied.
- The total number of patients pending discharge, but unable to leave due to limited or no bed availability at a skilled nursing facility or other post-acute care facility.
ED boarders are new patient admissions (people admitted to emergency departments) that are being held in the ED (or other areas of the hospital) due to lack of an inpatient bed.
Navigate to each tab to show a snapshot of data in time or overall trends.
The dashboard divides Wisconsin into seven geographic regions, based on Wisconsin’s seven regional healthcare emergency readiness coalitions (HERCS).
Data is refreshed daily on weekdays at 10 a.m. CDT.
Wisconsin’s Healthcare Emergency Preparedness Program has HERCs comprised of hospitals and health care organizations. These partners collaborate for the common goal of making their communities safer, healthier, and more resilient. EMResource is a real-time system platform used to optimize communication and expedite patient care among health care facilities.
ED boarders are an important metric in understanding a hospital’s capacity. A high number of ED boarders indicates a hospital’s resources are being strained as they may have a high number of new ED visits, a low number of available and staffed inpatient beds, or both. Larger hospitals often have more of an ability to board more patients in the ED than smaller hospitals.
Patients pending post-acute care discharge are patients that are medically stable for discharge, but are unable to leave the hospital due to limited or no bed availability at a skilled nursing facility or other post-acute care facility. The number of patients pending post-acute care discharge is not an indicator of hospital strain. Instead, a large number of patients pending post-acute care discharge can cause hospital capacity issues as it indicates a hospital is not able to discharge patients to free up beds and staff for new patients.
Inpatient bed occupancy is the total number of staffed inpatient beds that are occupied. This reflects occupancy levels for total number of all staffed inpatient beds in the facility that are currently set-up, staffed, and able to be used for a patient. This includes all overflow, observation, and active surge or expansion beds used for inpatients, ICU, PICU, NICU, and nursery beds. Also, any surge, hallway, or overflow beds that are open for use for a patient.
Pediatric inpatient bed occupancy is the total number of staffed pediatric inpatient beds that are occupied. Includes PICU, NICU, newborn nursery bed, and med-surg beds (beds in which medical or surgical pediatric patients may be routinely placed). Include any occupied surge, hallway, or overflow beds that are open for use.
Data for this dashboard is updated daily with new information reported by hospitals. Accuracy and timeliness of this data is dependent on individual hospital reporting processes.
Hospital capacity data are pulled from two sources:
- National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), collecting hospital COVID-19 data mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for all hospitals registered with CMS (Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services).
- Healthcare Emergency Preparedness System EMResource platform where participating Wisconsin hospitals report status updates daily.