§ Mr. F. Willeyasked the Minister of Health (1) how many hospital beds in Sunderland are at present unoccupied: and what is the reason;
(2) how many hospital beds in Sunderland are set aside to be available for emergency cases.
§ Mr. BevanOn 31st December, 1948, there were 477 available beds unoccupied, and 266 beds unoccupied for lack of staff, out of a total of 2,022 beds in the hospitals controlled by the Sunderland area hospital management committee. No one reason can be assigned for this. A proportion of the beds available in any hospital are inevitably unoccupied at any given moment because of the need for a working margin, that is to say, in order to allow of changes in occupancy: to keep a small, but not normally fixed, reserve for emergencies; and to make possible the proper classification and separation of different types of case and the necessary separation between the sexes and between adults and children. Seasonal factors such as the occurrence of Christmas also enter in. The fact that there are unoccupied beds does not therefore necessarily mean that more patients could immediately be admitted from the waiting list of that or other hospitals.