While hospital crowding is known to decrease quality of care, researchers may have isolated a definitive percentage at which patient mortality risk is adversely affected.
In research to be published in Management Science, researchers examined the correlation at occupancy levels and morality rates in 83 German hospitals.
Patient mortality began to rise when hospitals reached 92.5 percent occupancy, with researchers claiming that one in seven patient deaths occurring in the timeframe of the study were avoidable deaths due to overcrowding, according to a news release.
According to researchers, the effect may be due to failure to adequately adjust staffing levels during peak occupancy.
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