You can tell when a hospital is about to run out of adult beds just by looking at how many toddlers hit the ER the week before.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Leveraging Pediatric Emergency Visits as Early Signal for Respiratory Hospitalization Forecasting
SSRN · 6446228
The Takeaway
Researchers found that spikes in pediatric respiratory visits for children under five serve as a nearly perfect early warning signal for adult hospital crises. This 'toddler signal' gives hospitals a critical seven-day head start to reallocate staff and resources before the surge of adult patients arrives.
From the abstract
Background: The epidemics of respiratory viruses present a significant challenge to hospitals in the temperate zone on an annual basis. Frequently, the hospital overload is mitigated by the late reactive allocation of human and material resources that are, hence, suboptimal. This study investigates the potential for early forecasting of respiratory infection peaks by analyzing ER visit trends. <br><br>Methods: We clustered all-cause ER visits during the 2023–2025 winter seasons from the Nîmes Un