Impact of Population Ageing on Hospital Demand

摘要

This paper explores the consequences of demographic changes on future access to hospital beds. It is based on the situation in a Polish administrative region called the Wroclaw Region (WR). The aim of the paper is to quantify the impact of population ageing on hospital demand with particular emphasis on neurological patients. A computer simulation model was used to project the population evolution during the period 2016-2030 and forecast the number of neurological patients to be admitted to the WR hospitals. We found that the growth of the WR population will have a large impact on the number of elderly patients, including persons with diagnosed neurological disorders. The simulation experiments predict a continuous rise in the demand, and the ageing alone will increase the number of neurological patients in WR, on average, by 8.5% between 2016 and 2030.