Hospital Beds

(asked on 4th June 2014) - View Source
Questioner
Portrait
David Ruffley
(Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many hospital beds per head of population there were in (a) Bury St Edmunds, (b) Suffolk and (c) England and Wales in each of the last five years.

Answered by
Portrait
Jane Ellison
This question was answered on 11th June 2014

Information is not collected centrally on the catchment populations served by National Health Service hospital trusts in order to estimate beds per head of population at this level. Such information as is available is shown in the following table.

Estimated hospital beds per 1,000 population1, England2 and Suffolk3, 2009-10 to 2013-14

England

Suffolk

Beds in wards
open overnight

Beds in wards
open day only

Beds in wards
open overnight

Beds in wards
open day only

2009-
10

3.04

0.21

1.80

0.19

2010-
114, 5

2.71

0.21

1.92

0.15

2011-
12

2.61

0.21

1.77

0.14

2012-
13

2.56

0.22

1.70

0.14

2013-
14

2.53

0.22

1.74

0.15

Notes:

1The response uses Office for National Statistics (ONS) resident populations. However, patients may choose any hospital in England that offers NHS services for their first consultant-led outpatient appointment. Their subsequent inpatient treatment may then be in the same hospital. Locally, NHS hospital trusts will estimate the number of patients they expect to treat (the catchment population), but this information is not collected centrally.

2Data has been provided for England only. Health is a devolved matter in Wales.

3Data for Suffolk includes the number of beds in West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust and Ipswich Hospitals NHS Trust. Population data are for the former Suffolk Primary Care Trust for 2009 to 2012, and for the West Suffolk clinical commissioning group (CCG) and Ipswich and East Suffolk CCG. No suitable NHS geography exists for Bury St Edmunds.

4Bed availability and occupancy data were collected annually before 2010-11. Data have been collected quarterly since 2010-11. Annual figures have been calculated, weighted for the number of days in each quarter.

5The lower England figure for 2010-11 may reflect a change in the basis of the collection from annual to quarterly. The quarterly data are collected in the month following the end of the quarter, which is timelier and requires less estimation than the previous annual collection.

Sources:

NHS England, bed availability and occupancy data, 2009-10 to 2013-14

ONS national and subnational population estimates, 2009 to 2012

ONS 2012-based national and subnational population projections, 2013

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