§ Mr. Ralph HowellTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the number of hospital beds(a) available and (b) occupied in England and Wales for the years 1985 and 1986.
§ Mrs. CurrieThe requested information is given in the table for England.
The health services information steering group (chaired by Mrs. Körner) 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 1985 and 1986 respectively 19.5 and 20.3 in-patient cases were treated per available bed compared with 15 in 1979.
Statistics for Wales are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales.
National Health Service Hospitals in England 1985 1986 Average daily number: available beds 325,487 315,714 occupied beds1 263,960 254,597 1 Bed occupancy figures are based on a midnight count and do not therefore reflect the use of beds by patients who do not stay overnight.