The aging population and the introduction of Thailand universal healthcare have increased inpatients and outpatients to public hospitals, particularly to a hospital that provides special and comprehensive health services. Many inpatient wards have experienced large influx of inpatients as the hospitals have to admit all patients regardless their conditions. These overcrowding wards cause stress to medical staffs, block access between medical departments, hospital-acquired infections, and

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... tive uses of resources. One way to manage such inundated inpatient is to select some patients whose conditions require less clinical attention or whose lengths of stay are predictable and short and, then, place them at an observation ward. This intermediate ward increases turnover of beds and reduces unnecessary paperwork as patients are considered to be outpatients. In this article, we studied inpatient data of a tertiary care hospital in which an observation ward was considered to alleviate the overcrowding problem at Internal Medicine Department. The analysis of data showed that the hospital can balance inpatient flow by managing a group of patients who is admitted because of treatments ordered by its special clinics. Having explored several alternatives, we suggested patient selection criteria and proposed a layout at an observation ward. The hospital should increase medical beds in a new building ward because the current observation ward can handle 27.3% of total short stay patients, while the observation ward is projected to handle 80% of total short stay patients.