Lord Grayling: DHSC: All Documents

Written Question

Hospital Beds

Thursday 10th December 2020

Asked by: Lord Grayling (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 4 December 2020 to Question 110065 on Hospital Beds; whether information in the Covid-19 Situation Operational Dashboards beds analysis contains data on bed occupancy; and in what form his Department holds data about bed occupancy in the NHS.

Answered by Edward Argar

NHS England and NHS Improvement publish key data on bed occupancy, including daily and weekly COVID-19 admissions and bed occupancy.

Quarterly bed numbers and occupancy, including general and acute beds is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/bed-availability-and-occupancy/

Data collection on critical care bed numbers has been suspended during the response to COVID-19.

Weekly critical care bed availability and occupancy for winter 2020/21 is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/uec-sitrep/

Daily and weekly COVID-19 admissions and bed occupancy is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

Written Question

Hospital Beds

Friday 4th December 2020

Asked by: Lord Grayling (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

Answered by Edward Argar

Data is not available in the format requested.

Written Question

Hospital Beds

Tuesday 24th November 2020

Asked by: Lord Grayling (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will list by month total ICU bed occupancy in the NHS in each of the last three years, including the current year to date.

Answered by Edward Argar

The information requested from November 2017 to February 2020 is shown in the following table.

	% of Open beds occupied
Year	Period	Adult critical care beds	Paediatric intensive care beds	Neonatal critical care cots (or beds)

2017-18	November	84.6%	82.9%	74.0%
2017-18	December	82.2%	79.9%	70.9%
2017-18	January	86.6%	77.2%	71.5%
2017-18	February	85.4%	79.3%	69.7%
2017-18	March	82.6%	78.7%	72.3%
2018-19	April	81.9%	73.8%	72.2%
2018-19	May	79.9%	73.3%	72.9%
2018-19	June	79.6%	75.4%	74.2%
2018-19	July	78.3%	72.4%	69.8%
2018-19	August	78.4%	66.2%	70.1%
2018-19	September	80.0%	76.1%	69.3%
2018-19	October	80.8%	77.2%	73.8%
2018-19	November	82.7%	87.6%	72.5%
2018-19	December	75.4%	74.1%	67.4%
2018-19	January	85.3%	79.3%	70.1%
2018-19	February	81.5%	77.4%	70.1%
2018-19	March	80.7%	77.3%	71.2%
2019-20	April	80.8%	77.0%	70.2%
2019-20	May	79.2%	73.3%	70.8%
2019-20	June	80.6%	74.9%	73.3%
2019-20	July	79.6%	73.8%	69.9%
2019-20	August	79.4%	64.7%	69.4%
2019-20	September	80.8%	74.4%	69.9%
2019-20	October	80.9%	76.5%	69.7%
2019-20	November	82.9%	83.5%	73.0%
2019-20	December	75.3%	79.6%	71.5%
2019-20	January	83.0%	79.2%	71.2%
2019-20	February	81.1%	81.3%	69.3%

Notes:

Data relating to the number of available and occupied critical care beds is a monthly snapshot taken at midnight on the last Thursday of each month and can fluctuate from month to month.
Before February 2011, data on critical care beds were published bi-annually in a separate collection. Therefore, critical care data published until January 2011 should be treated with a degree of caution.
3. In November 2018, NHS England published refreshed guidance for MSitRep which provided clarification on the definition for Paediatric Intensive Care (PIC) bed availability and occupancy. This update was made to ensure definitions reflected the latest terminology and Paediatric Intensive Care Society (PICS) standards, to improve data quality and address overcounting of PIC beds (including possible inclusion of some high dependency unit (HDU, level 2) beds. Therefore, PIC bed availability data from November 2018 shows a step change, with the 339 reported beds in November 2018 being approximately 130 – 140 lower than previously in 2018-19 (around 460-470 available beds).

Due to COVID-19 and the need to release capacity across the National Health Service to support the response, NHS England have paused the monthly collection and publication of critical care bed capacity. However, from 12 November 2020, a separate weekly data update commenced which includes data on adult critical care capacity and occupancy. Data from 2 November to 15 November is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/uec-sitrep/urgent-and-emergency-care-daily-situation-reports-2020-21/

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