The Royal College of Surgeons said there was a chronic shortage of NHS hospital beds in England, after occupancy rates for overnight stays topped 89% for a fourth successive quarter.
The maximum occupancy rate for ensuring patients are well looked after and not exposed to health risks, is considered to be 85%, a figure that has not been achieved since NHS England began publishing statistics in 2010.
From July to September this year the percentage of beds occupied in wards open overnight was 89.1%, compared with 87.0% in the same period last year. That was the last time it was below 89%.
The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) said the figures, published on Thursday, made for alarming reading and indicated a failure to cope with the increasing number of older patients in hospital.
Ian Eardley, a consultant urological surgeon and RCS vice president, said: “The NHS has been able to reduce bed numbers as medical advances mean more modern surgery can take place without an overnight stay. However, these figures suggest bed reductions have now gone too far in the absence of sufficient social care or community care alternatives. We are now seeing increasing numbers of frail older patients in hospital because they have nowhere else to go. The lack of additional money in the autumn statement for social care and the NHS is only going to make this even harder.”
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, had been urged to increase funding for social care, amid warnings that it was in a critical condition, and to help plug current and future shortfalls at NHS trusts, but health providers were left disappointed.
The situation is set to deteriorate further with more beds expected to disappear under local sustainability and transformation plans designed to improve NHS services and ensure their viability.
Among the acute service beds at general hospitals set to be cut are 535 in Derbyshire, 400 each in Devon and West Yorkshire, and 30% of all beds in hospitals in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
Eardley said: “NHS leaders need to think carefully about whether this is a good idea without first putting in place better care in the community.”
Last month the Nuffield trust warned that the statistics underestimated the problem because they took a snapshot of occupancy at midnight, so did not capture squeezes in availability of beds during the day.
Eardley said: “I and too many of my colleagues all around the country are regularly having to cancel patients’ operations due to a lack of beds and delays in transferring patients back into the community.”
NHS hospitals suffer from chronic bed shortage, surgeons say
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