In health policy, Roemer's Law may be expressed as follows: "in an insured population, a hospital bed built is a bed filled" [1]
This rule was deduced by the American health services researcher Milton Roemer, working at the UCLA School of Public Health. Roemer and colleagues found a positive correlation between the number of short-term general hospital beds available per 1,000 population and the number of hospital days used per 1,000 population[2].
Whilst clearly Roemer's Law will not always hold true (not every bed that is ever built will be filled), it does provide the underpinning for certificate of need laws and for health planning [3].
The law is thought to be a consequence of induced demand i.e. physicians encouraging patients to consume services that the patients would not have chosen had they been fully informed.[4] Health planning and certificate of need laws aim to prevent the waste that would otherwise occur due to Roemer's Law.