The Bed Boom

Does the U.S. have more hospital beds than it needs? The American Hospital Association insists that it does not. The A.H.A. reports that the total number of hospital beds in the country dropped from 1.7 million to 1.54 million between 1965 and 1973 and notes that the U.S. now trails Ireland, France, West Germany and the United Kingdom in the number of beds per capita. The Washington-based Public Citizen Health Research Group disagrees. It has released a report claiming that the country has 100,000 more hospital beds than it needs--a figure some staffers at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare believe is correct. The surplus is costly, particularly in California, where officials say there are some 22,000 excess beds. It costs an average of $30,000 a year to maintain a hospital bed. California's hospital patients and taxpayers are thus paying more than $600 million a year for beds that only the hospitals feel are necessary.

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