Number of inpatient beds per 10,000 population

Indicator for the availability of hospital beds across crisis areas and proxy indicator of equity in the allocation of resources.

Numerator

Number of inpatient beds in functional health facilities, i.e. all public and private health facilities, in a defined administrative or health area at a given point in time

Denominator

The total population for the same administrative or health area, at the same point in time

Disaggregation

Administrative area; health area; public/private; support/no support from humanitarian organisations;

Indicator used for response monitoring ?

Yes

Types

Baseline

Output

Threshold / Standard

>10 inpatient beds per 10 000 population Follow-up of trends

General guidance

Calculation: this includes total hospital beds (for long-term and acute care), maternity beds and paediatric beds, but not delivery beds. Interpretation: This indicator is a snapshot of the situation at a certain period of time. At the pre-crisis phase, this indicator will indicate the baseline availability of health services. In the early phase after a crisis occurs, this indicator will show the consequences of the crisis (decrease/reduction in availability of health services) when compared to pre-crisis and the needs in term of support to health facilities. At later stages of crisis, trends in this indicator will allow to monitor the response in supporting health services. Limitation: this indicator measures the availability of inpatient beds but does not measure access by the popualtion.

Guidance on phases

There is a differing level of quality of data which can be collected at different phases of the emergency depending on the context, eg the data available and the systems for data collection in place before the crisis, the accessibility of the affected areas, the resources on the ground, etc...

Phase applicability

Pre-crisis/Baseline

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Phase 4

Guidance for pre-crisis/baseline

Number of inpatient beds, administrative boundaries, health areas boundaries, population per administrative areas and population per health areas should be available for crisis-prone countries, possibly as part of the COD/FOD, as a prepardness instrument

Data Sources

Numerator: health statistics; assessment of service availability (eg SARA, HeRAMS); Denominator: administrative boundaries; health areas boundaries; population per administrative area; population per health area;

Comments

Further guidance: Monitoring the building blocks of the health system (http://www.who.int/healthinfo/systems/monitoring/en/index.html)