§ Mr. Ralph Howellasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many unoccupied hospital beds there were in England in 1983.
§ Mr. John Patten[pursuant to his reply, 27 November, c. 472]: In 1983 there was a daily average of 66,660 beds recorded as being available but not occupied in National Health Service hospitals England. Bed occupancy figures are based on a midnight count and do not threfore reflect the use of beds by patients who do not stay overnight, for example, day surgery cases whose numbers have increased from 432,000 in 1978 to 581,000 in 1983.
A variety of reasons may lead to some beds being unoccupied. These include the need to have beds available for emergencies, unexpectedly early discharges which leave a bed available until the next day and unpredictable admissions (eg, in maternity cases).
The health services information steering group recommended in its first report that bed use data should include all patients using a ward in a 24-hour period and that aggregated bed occupancy statistics should not be used as an indicator of efficient bed use. A more useful measure of bed utilisation is patient throughput per available bed. For instance, in 1983 17.5 in-patient cases were treated per available bed compared with 14.5 in 1978.