• João Flávio de Freitas Almeida, Samuel Vieira Conceição, Luiz Ricardo Pinto, Cláudia Júlia Guimarães Horta, Virgínia Silva Magalhães, and Francisco Carlos Cardoso de Campos.
• PhD. Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte (MG), Brazil.
• Sao Paulo Med J. 2021 Mar 1; 139 (2): 178185178-185.

BackgroundThe fragility of healthcare systems worldwide had not been exposed by any pandemic until now. The lack of integrated methods for bed capacity planning compromises the effectiveness of public and private hospitals' services.ObjectivesTo estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of intensive care unit and clinical beds for Brazilian states, using an integrated model.Design And SettingExperimental study applying healthcare informatics to data on COVID-19 cases from the official electronic platform of the Brazilian Ministry of Health.MethodsA predictive model based on the historical records of Brazilian states was developed to estimate the need for hospital beds during the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsThe proposed model projected in advance that there was a lack of 22,771 hospital beds for Brazilian states, of which 38.95% were ICU beds, and 61.05% were clinical beds.ConclusionsThe proposed approach provides valuable information to help hospital managers anticipate actions for improving healthcare system capacity.

11 keywords...

hide…