The Department’s focus is on the active management of hospital capacity and patient flow, and on ensuring that patients are discharged as promptly as possible to the most appropriate care setting. In that context, the Department and the HSE place greater emphasis on operational performance and patient flow indicators rather than routine cost-based reporting. These include the number of patients experiencing delayed transfers of care, average and extended lengths of stay, levels of weekend discharges, and trends in these indicators over time. These metrics are routinely monitored by the HSE and are used to support discharge planning, improve patient flow, and relieve pressure on acute hospital capacity.
While delayed transfers of care are recognised as a contributor to hospital congestion, assigning a notional financial cost to individual bed days does not address the underlying causes of delay. For this reason, the Department prioritises the use of operational and performance information that supports practical interventions to reduce delays and improve outcomes for patients, rather than the routine production of estimated cost figures.
