Capacity Planning (Capital, Staff and Costs) of Inpatient Maternity Services: Pitfalls for the Unwary

This study investigates the process of planning for future inpatient resources (beds, staff and costs) for maternity (pregnancy and childbirth) services. The process of planning is approached from a patient-centered philosophy; hence, how do we discharge a suitably rested healthy mother who is fully capable of caring for the newborn baby back into the community? This demonstrates some of the difficulties in predicting future births and investigates trends in the average length of stay. While it is relatively easy to document longer-term (past) trends in births and the conditions relating to pregnancy and birth, it is exceedingly difficult to predict the future nature of such trends. The issue of optimum average bed occupancy is addressed via the Erlang B equation which links number of beds, average bed occupancy and turn-away. Turn-away is the proportion of times that there is not an immediately available bed for the next arriving inpatient. Data for maternity units show extreme and unexplained variation in turn-away. Economy of scale implied by queuing theory (and the implied role of population density) explains why many well intended community-based schemes fail to gain traction. The paper also addresses some of the erroneous ideas around the dogma that reducing length of stay ‘saves’ money. Maternity departments are encouraged to understand how their costs are calculated to avoid the trap where it is suggested by others that in reducing the length of stay, they will reduce costs and increase ‘efficiency’. Indeed, up to 60% of calculated maternity ‘costs’ are apportioned from (shared) hospital overheads from supporting departments such as finance, personnel, buildings and grounds, IT, information, etc., along with depreciation charges on the hospital-wide buildings and equipment. These costs, known as ‘the fixed costs dilemma’, are totally beyond the control of the maternity department and will vary by hospital depending on how these costs are apportioned to the maternity unit. Premature discharge, one of the unfortunate outcomes of turn-away, is demonstrated to shift maternity costs into the pediatric and neonatal departments as ‘boomerang babies’, and then require the cost of avoidable inpatient care. Examples are given from the English NHS of how misdirected government policy can create unforeseen problems.