Impact of long-stay beds on the performance of a tertiary hospital in emergencies.

Objective: To assess the impact of implementing long-stay beds for patients of low complexity and high dependency in small hospitals on the performance of an emergency referral tertiary hospital.

Methods: For this longitudinal study, we identified hospitals in three municipalities of a regional department of health covered by tertiary care that supplied 10 long-stay beds each. Patients were transferred to hospitals in those municipalities based on a specific protocol.