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70 Musculoskeletal & Neurological Rehabilitation KCE reports 57
5.1.4.4 Results
• S3 beds are defined as beds for the treatment and rehabilitation of
“neurological” disorders.
Practically, there is some overlap between both bed-types for an important number of
disorders that have “neurological” as well as “musculoskeletal” aspects. For instance, a
patient with a stroke, MS or a spinal cord lesion can be admitted in a S2 as well as in a
S3 unit. However, patients without a neurological disorder such as amputees or patients
with THR (total hip replacement) will only stay in S2 beds.
Limitations of this approach are:
• Focus lies on rehabilitation activities for inpatients, as the number of S2
and S3 beds gives an indication of rehabilitation activities in a hospital
setting.
• Musculoskeletal and neurological rehabilitation activities are also given
to patients who are hospitalized in other beds such as G (geriatric)
beds, S5 beds (beds for chronic disorders), K beds (neuropsychiatry
for children), C beds (surgery), D (internal medicine), …
As a consequence, an inventory of S2 and S3 beds, as an indicator for musculoskeletal
and neurological rehabilitation in hospital setting might be an underestimation of the
real activity. On the other hand, due to waiting lists for instance in nursing-homes, some
patients stay longer than necessary in the Sp-bed.
As shown in Figure 5.8 there are currently 3321 S2 and S3 beds in Belgium. The S2
beds, allocated for rehabilitation of musculoskeletal disorders represent 60 %, the S3
beds for neurological disorders 40 %.
Figure 5.8: General overview of S2 and S3 beds
S2 S3 S2 + S3
Flemish region 1069 702 1771
Walloon region 672 437 1109
Brussels region 278 163 441
Total 2019 1302 3321
Source p: https://portal.health.fgov.be – updated 29-05-2006
p There are two different databases for the inventory of S2/S3 beds. The first database gives an overview of the
total number of beds at a certain point in time (e.g. figure 4), the second source calculates a year-to-date
average of the total number of beds and takes into account the variation per institution in this given year (e.g.
figure 30). These databases diverge for the indicator “total number of beds” given their different calculation.