Hospitals are an essential institution in society. Today, a hospital can represent the advancements humans have made in the arts and sciences of medicine and healthcare. Before, however, hospitals also represented social and religious ideologies. The first recorded hospital stood between the 5th and 6th centuries in the Byzantine Empire. Later on, hospitals appeared in western Europe, starting in monasteries. When the industrial revolution came, it not only changed economies but also the healthcare system. As cities and populations grew, so did infectious diseases, injuries, and death rates. Hospitals had to keep up. By the 18th century, mental hospitals appeared. Before that, ignorance, superstition, and moral condemnation were the dominant beliefs for mental disorders. By the mid-19th century, hospitals and the medical field became more professional. Moreover, working in hospitals became part of the training of medical students. When the 20th century came, hospitals had become the highly scientific and well-managed institutions that we know today. However, as essential and as advanced as hospitals are, they still have their faults.
(Miller, T. S. (1997)), (Porter, R. (1997), ( McKee & Healy), (Encylopedia)
(Cybermetrics Lab), (Our World in Data), (Healthcare Global), (Guinness Word Records), (Dr. Ritu Agarwal), (Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare), (Kevin O’Leary)
More sadly, about half of those incidents are preventable.
(World Health Organization)
Of those incidents, 83% are preventable. Unfortunately, death occurs in around 30% of those incidents.
(World Health Organization)
Hospital statistics also indicate that ⅔ of the deaths and disabilities due to these adverse events occur in low- and middle-income countries. The adverse events are due to unsafe care and are probably one of the top 10 leading causes of death and disability int the world.
(World Health Organization)
Moreover, up to 80% of the incidents are preventable. Some of these incidents include errors in diagnosis, prescription, and use of medicines. Unfortunately, more than 6% of this patient harm results in hospitalizations.
(World Health Organization)
This estimate is from member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Some of the most troubling adverse events are blood clots, bedsores, and infections. Every year, these costs can amount to trillions of US dollars for these countries.
(World Health Organization)
Because it is now apparent that adverse and preventable events in the hospital cause both physical and financial burden on patients, there are now initiatives to improve patient safety. Some of the steps hospitals take include patient engagement.
(World Health Organization)
This amount accounts for almost 1% of global health expenditure. Moreover, this amount does not include lost wages, productivity, or extra health care costs due to the consequences of these errors. These medication errors include wrong dosages, wrong prescriptions, improper storage, and unclear or misunderstood instructions.
(World Health Organization)
In the United States, about 50% of these diagnostic errors can potentially be harmful. Moreover, about 10% of patient deaths are due to diagnostic errors.
(World Health Organization)
Urinary tract infections are the most common HAI in high-income countries. On the other hand, surgical site infections are the most common HAI in countries with limited resources.
(World Health Organization)
This number is 9 times higher than in developed countries.
(World Health Organization)
On the other hand, between 60 and 90% of patients in ICUs in low- and middle-income countries experience HAIs. As a comparison, device-associated infection densities are up to 13 times higher in these countries than in the USA.
(World Health Organization)
Unfortunately, of these 7 million, 1 million die. Up to 25% of these complications arise from unsafe surgical care procedures. Fortunately, however, the deaths due to complications from surgery have decreased in the past 50 years.
(World Health Organization)
However, an additional 143 million surgeries are needed to address emergency and essential conditions in low- and middle-income countries.
(Dr. Ng-Kamstra), (John Meara, MD)
Referral leakage is when patients are referred to another healthcare provider over their current option.
(HeathViewX)
About 10% of these examinations are done on children.
(World Health Organization)
Moreover, 7.5 million radiotherapy procedures are done globally every year. Out of these procedures, errors occur in about 15 per 10,000 treatments. Errors include overexposure to radiation and wrong-patient or wrong-site identification.
(World Health Organization)
Of these visits, 40 million are because of injury.
(Center for Disease Control and Prevention)
Of these hospital admissions, 2 million are admitted to critical care units.
(Center for Disease Control and Prevention)
They also wait an average of 2.25 hours before being sent home.
(Beacker’s Hospital Review)
Moreover, people with broken bones wait an average of 54 minutes before receiving pain medication.
(Beacker’s Hospital Review)
In Poland, Germany, and Greece, this amount is as high as 90%, which may be due to the use of alternative settings for care delivery, such as specialized outpatient services delivered in ambulatory centers or private practices.
(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
In contrast, European hospitals consume an average of between 182.5 and 365 L per hospital bed per year. Since hospitals consume so much water, many are using water conservation strategies such as reusing water non-potable water for other purposes such as sterilization and irrigation and collecting, treating, and using rainwater.
(Justo Garcia-Sanz-Calcedo), (Healthcare Design)
However, hospitals only account for 47% of the land occupied by healthcare facilities.
(Dr. Khaled Bawaneh)
This value accounts for 25% of hospital expenditure. These costs include marketing, overheads, and salaries of employees responsible for coding and billing. For-profit hospitals typically spend more on administrative costs than nonprofit, public, teaching, and rural hospitals. Moreover, hospitals in the US spend more on administrative costs than hospitals in Canada, France, Germany, England, Scotland, Wales, and the Netherlands.
(The Commonwealth Fund)
Moreover, labor and costs account for 70% of the budget for food services. In the UK, NHS hospitals spend as little as £2.61 a day on food per patient. Many other NHS hospitals spend less than £4 and £5. The highest amount an NHS hospital spends on food per patient per day is £39.60.
(TVO), (The Sun)
Hospitals are crucial in modern society. However, even with the many advancements in medical science, these health institutions still face many challenges that range from medical procedures to administrative ones. The hospitals of the future must therefore appropriately respond to these challenges. To do so, they must learn to balance medicine, finance, and management. More importantly, hospitals must learn to be flexible as diseases and pathogen evolve.
(McKee & Healy)
References
McKee & Healy:
https://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/78(6)803.pdf
Encylopedia:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/hospitals-history
Cybermetrics Lab:
https://hospitals.webometrics.info/en
Our World in Data:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hospital-beds-per-1000-people?time=2000..&country=KOR
Healthcare Global:
https://www.healthcareglobal.com/top10/top-10-largest-hospitals-world
Guiness Word Records:
Agarwal et al., 2010:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20812527/
Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22928243/
O’Leary et al., 2017:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28699941/
Guiness Word Records:
World Health Organization:
https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/patient_safety/en/
World Health Organization:
https://www.who.int/gpsc/country_work/gpsc_ccisc_fact_sheet_en.pdf
Ng-Kamstra et al., 2018:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6035511/
Meara et al., 2015:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25924834/
HeathViewX:
https://www.healthviewx.com/reduce-patient-referral-leakage-hospitals-health-systems/
Center for Disease Control and Prevention:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/emergency-department.htm
Becker’s Hospital Review:
https://hbr.org/2019/02/to-reduce-emergency-room-wait-times-tie-them-to-payments
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development:
Garcia-Sanz-Calcedo et al., 2017:
https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v10y2017i4p479-d94869.html
Healthcare Design:
https://www.healthcaredesignmagazine.com/architecture/saving-water-saving-money/
Bawaneh et al., 2019:
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/19/3775/htm
The Commonwealth Fund:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/in-the-literature/2014/sep/hospital-administrative-costs
TVO:
https://www.tvo.org/article/how-hospital-food-budgets-affect-patients
The Sun:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6030274/hospital-food-nhs-crisis/
Miller, T. S. (1997). The birth of the hospital in the Byzantine Empire. Baltimore, MD, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press
Porter, R. (1997). The greatest benefit to mankind: a medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present. London, UK: Harper Collins Publishers
© 2025 Rest Right Mattress. All Rights Reserved.