Coronavirus: England only has 15 beds for worst respiratory cases

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society...-only-has-15-beds-for-worst-respiratory-cases


Coronavirus: England only has 15 beds for worst respiratory cases
NHS says system will struggle if more than 28 patients need artificial lung treatment
Rowena Mason Deputy political editor
Thu 27 Feb 2020 18.07 GMT

England only has 15 available beds for adults to treat the most severe respiratory failure and will struggle to cope if there are more than 28 patients who need them if the number of coronavirus cases rises, according to the government and NHS documents.

Ministers have revealed in parliamentary answers that there are 15 available beds for adult extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) treatment at five centres across England. The government said this could be increased in an emergency. There were 30 such beds in total available during the 2018-19 winter flu season.

But an NHS England document prepared in November 2017 reveals the system will struggle to cope if more than 28 patients need the treatment, describing that situation as black/critical...

 

[Vibrant62]

Best estimate of NHS critical care beds.

"The NHS maintains critical care beds for patients who are seriously ill and require constant support. These are measured on a different basis to other beds described in this section.1 Unlike most other categories of hospital bed, the total number of critical care beds has increased in recent years. In 2011/12 there were around 5,400 critical care beds, by 2016/17 this had risen to 5,912 – an increase of around 9.5 per cent (NHS England 2017b).2 Of these, around 68 per cent are for use by adults and the remainder for children and infants.

A recent government review of critical care services showed substantial variation in the number of critical care beds maintained per 100,000 of population across advanced health systems (Monitor 2014, p 17). In a comparison of eight advanced European systems, the UK was shown to maintain the joint second-lowest number of critical care beds relative to the population (Bittner et al 2013).3"

I am aware that nor all critical care beds are currently open, as some hospitals do not have enough specialist staff to keep them open, so the actual number may be lower.

Currently England has general and acute hospitals totalling 110,568 in April-June 2019. A full review of bed numbers can be found within this Kings Fund report.

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

We have the second lowest number of acute beds per 100,000 in Europe. Worth reviewing for those interested