A modular hospital bed and method of patient handling which permits a patient to remain on a single hospital bed from admittance to and through discharge from a hospital, thereby reducing the number of patient bed surface-to-surface transfers and the number of hospital beds. The method comprises providing a plurality of rollable modular beds, assigning a patient to one of the modular beds upon admittance to a hospital emergency room, providing a plurality of retrofittable modules for selective removable securement to the modular beds, with at least one module being provided from each of a patient transport module group, critical care module group and ambulatory/rehabilitation module group, and transforming the one modular bed as the patient is treated in and transferred from the emergency room and transferred to, treated in, and transferred from the surgery room, the critical care unit and the med/surg unit, and finally discharged, by securing to and removing from the one bed selected ones of the retrofittable modules thereby tailoring the one bed to the needs of the patient at any point from admittance to through discharge from the hospital.