Bed occupancy, patient throughput and size of independent hospice units in the UK

There are few published figures relating to clinical activity of inpatient hospice units. Aquestionnaire was circulated to 60 independent hospices in the UK asking about number of beds, bed occupancy and number of admissions; 45 units responded. It is concluded that bed occupancy is an unreliable measure which can give significantly different figures depending on how it is calculated, and the number of admissions per bed per year (the throughput) may be the most informative single measure. Formulae for calculating maximum and average throughput for hospices of different size are provided.