Size a Hospital's Wheelchair Fleet From Patient Flow and Peak Demand

Estimate how many wheelchairs a typical hospital should keep. Explain how you define the hospital, where the demand for wheelchairs comes from, the assumption behind each number, and how you would check that the final count makes sense. ```hint Chairs in use at the busiest hour Think about each moment a patient needs a chair, how long that use keeps the chair busy, and when in the day those moments pile up. Then ask whether every chair the hospital owns is actually ready when someone goes looking for one. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What does "average hospital" mean here: roughly how many beds, and does it have an emergency department and outpatient clinics, or is it a specialty facility such as a rehabilitation hospital? - Are we counting only shared transport chairs, or also chairs assigned to one patient for their whole stay and specialty chairs (bariatric, pediatric, powered)? - Should the fleet cover the busiest hour of a normal day, or also surge days? - Does the hospital take discharged patients to the exit by wheelchair as a rule? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A defined hospital (size, services) and scope of chairs before any math. - Demand built from distinct sources (discharges, trips to tests, emergency arrivals, outpatients, patients who need a chair all day), each with a usage time. - Conversion from daily use to chairs needed at the peak hour, plus a buffer for chairs that are broken, being cleaned or misplaced. - Correct arithmetic, a final count, and a sanity check such as chairs per bed or per unit. - The cost of having too few versus too many, and which assumption moves the answer most. ### Follow-up Questions - How would the estimate change for a rehabilitation or orthopedic hospital? - Staff say they spend a lot of time hunting for wheelchairs even though the count looks adequate. What would you look at before buying more? - Which data that the hospital already collects would you use to validate your estimate?