Despite the conventional wisdom that aging baby boomers justify the sharp increase in U.S. hospital construction, population aging will play a relatively small role in rising demand for inpatient hospital care over the next decade, according to a study by Center for Studying Health System Change. The study estimates that between 2005 and 2015, population aging will increase use of inpatient services by only 0.74% per year--or 7.6% over the entire decade--compared with a projected overall 64.9% increase in inpatient services during the same period.
The researchers claim that an aging population will have a much smaller than expected impact on inpatient utilization because the average age of the U.S. population is projected to increase only from 36.5 to 37.9 years in the next decade--an average annual increase of 0.37%. Also, the consequences of aging vary widely across medical conditions treated in an inpatient setting, with certain cardiovascular and orthopedic procedures expected to increase, for example, while services for OB and mental illnesses will decline. Local population trends and medical technology advances will be far more important in forecasting community needs for additional inpatient hospital capacity than population aging, according to the study.
