FACILITY UPGRADES


reassignment of personnel (Table 1). Thus, our results are not inconsistent with previous results that cancellation of non-urgent surgery was one of the simultaneous/supplementary adaptations to increase hospital infrastructure capacity. The drawback of our research is that detailed information on management of staff and patients was not collected in the questionnaire. The strain on healthcare staff might be the main actual limitation of hospitalization capacity for infected patients although the number of backup bed was expanded technically. Further research is needed to understand how infrastructure adaptation and management can be combined to expand bed capacity more efficiently.


Conclusion Remodelling hospital facilities made a large contribution to increasing available capacity during the COVID-19 surge, although reducing the workload of healthcare staff including psychological strain, was a prerequisite for a feasible increase in patient admissions.


p<0.01


0.40 0.35 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 0


n Difficulties (–) n Difficulties (+)


0.37


NS 0.15 0.11


0.00 Remodelled Figure 4. Influence of COVID-19 clusters.


References 1 Dunn P, Allen L, Cameron G, Alderwick H. COVID-19 policy tracker. [Available from: https://www.health.org.uk/news-and- comment/charts-andinfographics/covid-19- policy-tracker]. Accessed 18 April 2023.


IFHE


Acknowledgements l This work was supported by MHLW Special Research Program Grant Number JPMH20CA2046.


2 Berger E, Winkelmann J, Eckhardt H et al. A country-level analysis comparing hospital capacity and utilization during the first COVID-19 wave across Europe. Health policy 126 (2022); 373-81.


3 McCabe R, Schmit N, Christen P et al. Adapting hospital capacity to meet


changing demands during the COVID-19 pandemic. BMC Medicine 2020; 18: 329-42.


4 Ndayishimiye C, Sowada C, Dyjach P et al. Associations between the COVID-19 pandemic and hospital infrastructure adaptation and planning – A scoping review. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2022; 19: 8195 [https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19138195].


5 Chen S, Zhang Z, Yang J et al. Fangcang shelter hospitals: A novel concept for responding to public health emergencies. Lancet 2020; 395: 1305–14.


Non-remodelled


36


IFHE DIGEST 2024


Annual frequency of clusters


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