Information is not available in the format requested as data is not collected on the total number of hospital beds by year.

The information is not available in the format requested. National Health Service bed capacity is not fixed and is flexible to meet changes in demand. Demand in winter 2021/22 remains uncertain due to factors including hospitalisations of patients with influenza or COVID-19.

We will continue to support the National Health Service in taking action to help reduce pressures on hospital bed capacity and increase patient flow through the emergency care pathway. This includes action within community services to help avoid unnecessary emergency admissions and the enhanced patient discharge arrangements which the NHS estimates has reduced long lengths of stay, increasing capacity to the equivalent of over 6,000 beds.

Nightingale hospitals are activated based on local clinical decisions in response to patient demand. The National Health Service will flex Nightingale capacity to address demand as has been done throughout the pandemic. As at week commencing 18 January 2021, the NHS Nightingale Hospital Exeter is providing inpatient services to COVID-19 patients from 48 beds. The NHS Nightingale Hospital North West and the NHS Nightingale Hospital London are providing ‘step-down’ care to non-covid-19 patients and provide 36 and 64 beds respectively. Other Nightingale sites at Harrogate and Bristol are supporting NHS elective and diagnostic services but are not providing inpatient services.

Information is not available in the format requested as data is not collected on the total number of hospital beds by year.

Data on overall spare hospital bed capacity is not collected in the format requested. Data collections on hospital beds are divided into key bed subgroups, including general and acute beds, critical care beds and mental health beds. Hospital bed capacity is not fixed and can be scaled according to requirement.

Additionally, there is no official agreed seasonal norm for bed occupancy.

We are working with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the National Health Service to ensure everyone discharged from hospital has an updated COVID-19 test result and anyone testing positive is discharged to a setting that is assured to be able to provide safe care.

The CQC has worked with experts to develop an online infection prevention and control (IPC) inspection tool. If settings meet the expectations set out in the CQC’s IPC tool, they will be assured as having the practices and processes in place, at the time of the inspection, to provide appropriate post-discharge care for people who have tested COVID-19 positive.

The overall capacity of Nightingale hospitals is not fixed and can be scaled according to requirement. As part of their comprehensive activation plans, each Nightingale team has developed a clinical model that can be scaled up as and when additional capacity is required in the region. This ensures that the right skill mix of staff will be available from National Health Service trusts in the region and via NHS Professionals and through direct recruitment if required.

The following table provides data on the number of inpatient beds for eating disorders for adults and for children and young people.

Source: NHS England

Note:

¹Some children and young people with eating disorders are treated in general child and adolescent mental health services.

The maximum number of Nightingale beds in Manchester is 633, in Sunderland it is 460 and in Harrogate it is 495 beds.

These numbers will augment existing critical care beds in each region to provide surge capacity.

All Nightingale hospitals have the ability to care for ventilated patients, however, clinical models can adapt to local need. The local clinical leaders will plan how to use the Nightingale capacity based on local conditions, considering the needs of all patients requiring National Health Service care.

National Health Service patients are benefitting from an unprecedented partnership with private hospitals as we battle the COVID-19 outbreak. The Department and NHS England and NHS Improvement have worked with the independent sector to secure all appropriate inpatient capacity and other resource across England. The addition of around 6,500 additional beds has increased NHS capacity and ensured that facilities are available for patients diagnosed with COVID-19 whilst ensuring continuity of service for non-COVID-19 patients requiring elective activity, including cancer and other urgent treatment. The latest collected information shows that over 215,000 patient contacts had taken place under the contract.

Independent providers have continued to provide urgent operations for their private pay or insured patients as well as for NHS patients. From the middle of May 2020, independent providers have also been able to provide more routine elective work to private pay or insured patients and where this has been agreed locally with the NHS.

Regarding future provision of NHS treatment, an invitation to tender will be issued by NHS England and NHS Improvement to the healthcare market in October 2020. It will invite providers of elective care services to put themselves forward to be appointed to a framework and, as such, available to deliver elective services to NHS patients, on a cost-per-case basis, at rates reflecting those paid to providers for the same services pre-COVID-19

As part of preparing for winter, the Government has provided an additional £3 billion to the NHS. This includes additional funding to the NHS to allow them to continue to use additional hospital capacity from the independent sector, and to maintain the Nightingale hospitals, in their current state, until the end of March 2021.

NHS England publishes a ‘COVID-19 Hospital Activity’ dataset which includes the number of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 as well as beds occupied by patients with COVID-19, both at provider level only. Data specifically for the Nightingale hospitals is not held.

The Nightingale hospitals in London and the North West have been placed on standby.

The available capacity and staffing of the Nightingale hospitals is decided locally by National Health Service trusts and varies over time based on demand. At present, the Nightingale hospitals are on standby but are ready to be stood up if needed. The continued future use of the Nightingale hospitals is currently under consideration.

The Government has stated that the NHS will get what it needs in terms of funding during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of patients admitted to each of the Nightingale Hospitals is not available in the format requested. Admission data for COVID-19 patients is published online by NHS England and NHS Improvement at trust level but not for individual hospitals.

To date, we have not undertaken an assessment of the relationship between spare bed capacity in the National Health Service and deaths from COVID-19 in care homes and the community. The safety of residents and staff is always a priority and patients should not be discharged unless it is clinically safe to do so.

The National Health Service’s response in ensuring that there has been sufficient capacity in place to manage COVID-19 demand has been exceptional. We ensured that we had as many beds available as possible to care for patients with severe respiratory problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NHS expanded its critical care capacity significantly to cope with the predicted demand from COVID-19 patients. This included an increase in critical care beds, ventilators and provision of oxygen.

All COVID-19 patients who were admitted received the urgent treatment that they needed.

On 19 March 2020, the Department and the National Health Service co-published COVID-19 Hospital Discharge Service Requirements, setting out guidance on supporting the safe discharge of patients who no longer need acute care. A copy of this guidance is attached.

The guidance also sets out the steps that care providers should be taking and we provided £1.3 billion to support the process. We have provided advice to care homes throughout the pandemic in response to the latest conditions and emerging evidence.

The COVID-19 hospital discharge service requirements were expected to help free up 15,000 hospital beds across England.

On 2 June, NHS England published an analysis on discharges to care homes. This data was not previously available. The data showed that the proportion of people discharged to care homes, nursing homes and hospices between 15 March and 16 April was 2.8%.

A small number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 may be discharged from the NHS within the 14-day period from the onset of COVID-19 symptoms and also require ongoing social care. If a care home provider does not feel they can provide the appropriate care for these individuals, the individual’s local authority should secure alternative appropriate accommodation and care for the remainder of the required isolation period.

It is not possible to provide the data requested.

Information on critical care beds is not published in the format requested.

Information on critical care beds is not published in the format requested.

The number of critical care beds in use changes over time, particularly since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. The National Health Service is currently flexing critical care beds numbers to meet demand - including the availability of additional facilities from the independent sector providers and the development and occupancy of Nightingale Hospitals.

The NHS will be provided with the resources it needs to keep the public safe at this time.