HC Deb 16 October 2003 vol 411 cc344-5W
Mr. Brady

To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what estimate he has made of the number of patients in each of the last 12 months who have returned home following admission for in-patient treatment due to the unavailability of a hospital bed, without being discharged from hospital; [129100]

(2) what estimate he has made of the average time between an in-patient admission and the patient being allocated to a bed over the last 12 months. [129146]

Mr. Hutton

[holding answer 11 September 2003]: Data are not collected on this aspect of patient care. The NHS Modernisation Agency has established an emergency services collaborative. The collaborative is working with every health community to analyse bed management processes and spread best practice. However, the Department collects quarterly data on the number of operations cancelled by hospitals for non-clinical reasons at the last minute (that is, on the day the patients are due to arrive or after arrival in hospital or on the day of their operation) or on the day of surgery (in 2002–03 only). Data for England, by national health service trust and strategic health authority level, are available in the Library and on the Department's website at www.doh.gov.uk/hospitalactivity/data_requests.htm

The data collected on cancelled operations for non-clinical reasons are not broken down into the reasons for cancellation.

Mr. Amess

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the number of beds that will be freed up in NHS trust hospitals due to the creation of fast track NHS diagnostic and treatment centres. [131887]

Mr. Hutton

The independent sector treatment centre programme will free up substantial additional capacity. In some specific instances, the activity freed up in the national health service trust is lower than the numbers being transferred into treatment centres. This is due to the nature of the work which will replace it, for example, more complex cases, with longer lengths of stay, as well as providing capacity to improve non-elective services such as accident and emergency.