Off-service placement is a common capacity pooling strategy that hospitals utilize to address mismatches in supply and demand that arise from the day-to-day variation in patient demand. This strategy involves placing patients in a bed in a unit that is designated for another specialty service....

Hospital managers struggle with the day-to-day variability in patient admissions to different clinical services, each of which typically have a fixed allocation of hospital beds. In response, many hospitals engage in capacity pooling by assigning patients from a service whose designated beds are...