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Healthcare Management vocabulary · Patient Flow and Capacity

Capacity

Meaning in healthcare management, with examples

/kəˈpæsəti/nounCore term

In healthcare management, capacity means: The amount of care a hospital or service can provide with its beds, staff, rooms and equipment in a given time.

In Turkish: kapasite, yatak kapasitesi

How it is used

Managers talk about bed capacity, theatre capacity, increasing or freeing up capacity, and matching capacity to demand. When a hospital is 'at full capacity' or 'over capacity', it may open extra 'surge capacity' for a short time.

Example sentences

  1. We simply do not have the capacity to see these patients within six weeks.

  2. The hospital has been running at full capacity since the start of December.

Common collocations

  • bed capacity
  • full capacity
  • increase capacity
  • free up capacity
  • surge capacity
  • bed occupancy rateThe percentage of a hospital's available beds that are filled by patients over a given period, used to judge how busy the hospital is.
  • bed managementThe daily work of tracking which beds are free, which patients need them and where each patient should go, so that beds are used well.
  • bottleneckA point in a process where work slows down or piles up because demand at that step is greater than its capacity.
  • patient flowThe movement of patients through a hospital or health system, from arrival and assessment to treatment, transfer and discharge, ideally without unnecessary delays.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Patient Flow and Capacity

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This page explains English vocabulary for learners. It is not medical advice.