(312) ICU Bed Capacity and Life Expectancy Among Developed Nations

Introduction: ICU bed count and availability are essential metrics in health resources, which are important to a nation's overall healthcare. Although studies have looked at the correlation between hospital beds and their availability to health outcomes, we analyzed the rate of change in ICU bed numbers to the rate of change in the life expectancy of ten developed nations.

Methods: Data regarding ICU beds and life expectancy was retrieved from publicly available official websites from 2010 to 2019. The countries studied were Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We studied the change in population with changes in life expectancy rate and compared our data with changes in ICU beds over this period.

Results: Nine counties showed an increase in population, except Italy, which showed a slight decrease (.001 percent). All countries showed an increase in life expectancy over the nine years except for the United States, which showed a slight decrease (78.6 years to 78.5 years). Interestingly, six countries cut down their ICU beds per 100,000 population: Australia (8.94 to 8.1), Germany (29.2 to 28.4), Italy (12.5 to 8.7), New Zealand (5.53 to 3), Sweden (5.8 to 5.5) and the United States (33.6 to 21.6). We used the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test to compare life expectancy changes and changes in ICU beds. Our Z-value was - 0.9683, and the p-value was .33204, signifying increasing or decreasing ICU beds had no correlations with the overall population’s improvement in life expectancy. Our value of W was 18, which is way above the critical value at N = 10 for p < .05 at 8.

Conclusions: Our study found no significant correlation between total ICU beds per 100,000 and overall improvement in the population's life expectancy. 2010, the annual cost estimate for ICU beds was $108 million. Although improvements in preventive medicine, regular outpatient care, and multi-dimensional improvement in healthcare structure may be the key to reducing ICU bed requirements, further research to determine the optimal balance for ICU beds in comparison to their need has to be studied. Our analysis needs to be further investigated.