Cost of Closing Beds for Construction
Taking beds (or any area of the hospital) out of service has a direct consequence on your ability to adapt to changing requirements and on revenue.
What would happen if a facility was renovating its laundry facility and immediately had a census spike? How would you respond? Scramble to restore laundry service and abandon the renovation? Sub-contract linen service for the duration of the renovation? Or would you have structured the renovation to always maintain a minimum laundry capacity, with the ability to sub-contract during extreme loads?
This final option would require additional planning, as well as the cooperation of both contractor and staff to work with and around each other.
A second example focusing on revenue...
What would the revenue and P.R. consequences be of closing a NICU nursery and being forced to transport patients to another facility for care? Your facility may not realize $1,000 per patient-day in profit from any area of the hospital, but the revenue is a necessary part of the fiscal health of your institution. Removing one NICU bed would result in several thousands of dollars in lost revenue per day. Removing a nursery with 10 beds would eliminate hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue in just one month.
Working in and around critical care areas such as intensive care units is possible, though it isn't easy.