US hospitals are on track for a crisis in as little as seven years. This stark warning comes from a group of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who are concerned about trends in hospital bed occupancy and staffing across the country since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new post-pandemic national hospital occupancy average is 75% -- a full 11 percentage points higher than the pre-pandemic average, largely due to a reduction in staffed hospital beds. This puts the U.