There's a lot of news stor ies of late about hospitals overflowing with too many inpatients and not enough beds. Here's some of the headlines: What is not so often reported is that this is directly related to Ontario's policies of very high hospital bed occupancy and very few hospital beds. The graph below shows curative hospital bed occupancy in European countries -- with occupancy levels usually hovering around 75%. The exceptions are Ireland (which has well above average occupancy) and Macedonia and the Netherlands (which have well below average occupancy). Between 2008 and 2014 most countries saw a small decline in bed occupancy. Under the OECD definition, "curative" hospital beds excludes rehabilitative and long term care beds. Eurostat, “Health care resource statistics – beds,” 2016, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Healthcare_resource_statistics_-_beds Ontar...
