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    Beds 📂 Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on July 14, 2021, 4:28 pm, in reply to "Former BMA deputy chair warns new NHS bill is ‘astonishing’ manoeuvre to allow Tories to reduce trea"

    Beds per capita apparently going down everywhere except China & SE Asia:

    *****

    https://www.notechmagazine.com/2021/04/number-of-hospital-beds-per-1000-inhabitants-1960-2018.html

    Number of Hospital Beds per 1,000 Inhabitants (1960-2018)

    Corona restrictions around the world are primarily aimed at not overwhelming hospital capacity. But hospital capacity is not what it used to be. In the 1960s and 1970s, the US and many European countries had around ten hospital beds per thousand inhabitants. Nowadays, the US has less than three, while many European countries have less than five.



    Hospital beds are defined as beds that are maintained, staffed, and immediately available for use. Total hospital beds include acute care beds, rehabilitative beds and other beds in hospitals.
    North America: 2-3 beds

    The USA had 9.18 hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants in 1960, compared to 2.87 beds in 2017. Canada had 2.52 beds per 1,000 in 2017.
    Europe: 2-8 beds

    Europe had 9.52 hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants in 1980, compared to 5.38 beds in 2018. However, there are notable differences between European countries.

    In Central Europe, the decrease is relatively limited and the number of hospital beds remains at 6-8 per 1,000 inhabitants:

    Germany: 10.5 (1960) → 10.12 (1991) → 8.24 (2007) → 8.3 (2013) → 8.0 (2017)
    Austria: 9.94 (1985) → 7.75 (2007) → 7.27 (2018)
    Hungary: 9.30 (1994) → 8.16 (2000) → 7.19 (2007) → 7.01 (2018)
    Czechia: 10.11 (1980) → 6.62 (2018)
    Poland: 6.68 (2003) → 6.54 (2018)

    In some Western European countries, the decrease is more pronounced, with the number of hospital beds now at 5-6 per 1,000 inhabitants:

    France: 10.5 (1974) → 8.34 (1998) → 7.06 (2007) → 5.91 (2018)
    Belgium: 8.30 (1970) → 7.64 (1989) → 6.27 (2007) → 6.20 (2013) → 5.62 (2018) → 5.58 (2019)

    In many other European countries, the number of hospital beds has decreased to around 2-3 per 1,000 inhabitants — similar to the numbers in the US:

    Norway: 3.60 (2017)
    Finland: 8.25 (1993) → 3.61 (2018)
    Netherlands: 7.5 (1965) → 5.8 (1990) → 4.34 (2007) → 4.7 (2009) → 3.17 (2018)
    Italy: 8.97 (1960) → 3.91 (2007) → 3.40 (2012) → 3.14 (2018)
    Ireland: 9.03 (1980) → 2.97 (2018)
    UK: 4.08 (2000) → 2.76 (2013) → 2.54 (2017)
    Denmark: 8.10 (1970) → 4.54 (1997) → 3.69 (2007) → 2.43 (2018)
    Sweden: 14.18 (1960) → 2.86 (2007) → 2.14 (2018)

    Finally, some European countries started with much lower numbers:

    Spain: 4.66 (1970) → 3.25 (2007) → 2.97 (2018)
    Greece: 5.79 (1960) → 4.2 (2018)
    Portugal: 3.96 (1985) → 3.45 (2018)

    Asia: +10 beds

    If we look at China, we see the opposite trend. The number of hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants grew from 1.44 in 1965 to 4.31 in 2017. China now has more hospital capacity per capita than the US and a great deal of European countries. The countries with the most hospital beds are also in Asia. In 2017, Japan and South Korea had 13.05 and 12.27 hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants, respectively.

    Kris De Decker

    Data: Eric Wagner. Graph: Kathy Vanhout.
    Sources

    https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/hospital-beds/indicator/english_0191328e-en
    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.BEDS.ZS?end=2015&start=1960&view=map&year=1960
    https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm
    https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
    https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/hlth_sha11_hf/default/table?lang=en
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/184955/us-national-health-expenditures-per-capita-since-1960/

    April 13, 2021 by kris de decker

    *****

    In England:

    *****

    https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers

    Key messages

    - The total number of NHS hospital beds in England, including general and acute, mental illness, learning disability, maternity and day-only beds, has more than halved over the past 30 years, from around 299,000 in 1987/88 to 141,000 in 2018/9, while the number of patients treated has increased significantly.

    - Most other advanced health care systems have also reduced bed numbers in recent years. However, the UK has fewer acute beds relative to its population than many comparable health systems.

    - Since 1987/88, the largest percentage reductions in bed numbers have occurred in mental illness and learning disability beds as a result of long-term policies to move these patients out of hospital and provide care in the community.

    - The number of hospital beds for general and acute care has fallen by 34 per cent since 1987/88, the bulk of this fall due to closures of beds for the long-term care of older people. Medical innovation, including an increase in day-case surgery, has also had an impact by reducing the time that many patients spend in hospital.

    - While reductions in bed numbers have slowed in recent years, there are opportunities to make better use of existing bed stock by preventing avoidable admissions, reducing variations in length of stay and improving the discharge of patients. Efforts to make better use of the existing stock should focus on the relatively small number of mainly older patients who stay in hospital a long time.

    - However, research shows that initiatives to moderate demand for hospital care often struggle to succeed. Progress depends on having sufficient capacity to provide appropriate care outside hospital, yet evidence suggests that intermediate care capacity is currently only enough to meet around half of demand and cuts in funding have led to significant reductions in publicly funded social care.

    - Today there are signs of a growing shortage of beds. In 2018/19, overnight general and acute bed occupancy averaged 90.2 per cent, and regularly exceeded 95 per cent in winter, well above the level many consider safe.

    - The lack of available hospital beds has been closely associated with the deterioration in performance against key waiting time standards, such as how long patients should wait in accident and emergency (A&E) or for planned operations.

    - In some areas it may be possible to reduce the number of beds after advances in medical practice and progress towards moving care out of hospital. However, at a national level, with hospitals under real strain from rising demand and staff shortages and the NHS only now coming to the end of a decade-long funding squeeze, further significant reductions are both unachievable and undesirable.

    - How hospital beds are used depends on the availability of other services, yet national data does not provide a full picture of NHS bed capacity and requirements. Greater clarity from NHS national bodies is needed on their expectations for overall health and care bed capacity over the medium term, and the consequences of these choices

    *****

    How long before we're completely on our own? What's the point of continuing to honour this social contract when it's clear that we're getting screwed over at every turn?

    I

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