The objective of this project is to develop a bed that has the physical dimensions, including width and features of a standard hospital bed, and that also has the additional feature of being capable of automatically folding itself into a configuration resembling a powered wheelchair, preferably no wider than a conventional wheelchair so as to enable maneuverability . Such a device would provide...

BACKGROUND Decreasing hospital length of stay, and so freeing up hospital beds, represents an important cost saving which is often used in economic evaluations. The savings need to be accurately quantified in order to make optimal health care resource allocation decisions. Traditionally the accounting cost of a bed is used. We argue instead that the economic cost of a bed day is the better valu...

OBJECTIVE We evaluated the usefulness of a short stay or 23-hour ward in a pediatric unit of a large teaching hospital, Westmead Hospital, and an academic Children's hospital, The New Children's Hospital, to determine if they are a useful addition to the emergency service. METHODS This is a descriptive comparison of prospectively collected data on all children admitted to the short stay ward ...