"Admits per 1,000" is a term that represents how many patients are admitted to a hospital, healthcare facility or treatment center for every 1,000 people who seek help there. Many patients enter through the emergency department or in-patient admissions at regional hospitals, but other types of medical providers also are included, such as psychiatric and chemical-dependency facilities. Regardless of the type of medical facility, admits per 1,000 is a ratio that's calculated using a simple math equation.

Tip

You can calculate the number of admits per 1,000 visits by taking the number of admits over a given time, multiplying it by 1,000, and then dividing it by the total number of people who visited the facility during that identical duration of time.

How to Calculate Admits Per Thousand

In order to calculate the number of admits per thousand, you must first determine the number of patients admitted to a hospital, healthcare facility or treatment center in a given time period. Next, multiply this number by 1,000. Lastly, divide the result by the total number of people who visited that medical provider, including those who were not ultimately admitted to the facility.

By using the calculation above, if a hospital admits 500 patients from a total of 800 people who visited the hospital, the number of admits per thousand is 625 (500 x 1,000 divided by 800 = 625).

Why Is This Calculation Important?

Hospitals and other in-house medical facilities face ongoing challenges as they prepare budgets and cost estimates for future years. Admits per 1,000 is one way they can project a future year's financial needs based on the past year's actual patient statistics. This simple equation can help healthcare centers find solutions to minimize their costs, manage their supplies, modify their medical practices and adjust their budgets.

Benchmarking to Compare Standards

Admits per 1,000 also provides a benchmark, or point of reference, from which one hospital may measure its performance based on one or more other hospitals. Benchmarking can compare one hospital's statistics to other hospitals, which may be in the same community/county, state or national database. Hospitals may use the benchmarking tool to help them identify areas that need improvement toward their ongoing goal of providing the best patient care at the best costs.

Identifying Proactive Benefits

Although monitoring expenses is a primary focus of calculating admits per 1,000, hospitals can also use this calculation to help identify industry trends as they begin to emerge. This proactive management tool allows hospitals to stay on the forefront of subtle shifts in patient care so they can quickly identify and eliminate wasteful spending and unnecessary supply costs and other expenses. With a total of 140-plus million hospital visits each year just to emergency departments, according to a 2014 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, the data collected from a hospital's admits-per-1,000 calculations have significant potential to reduce national healthcare costs.