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