A short thread about hospital bed pressures

This may surprise some people outside the healthcare bubble but for a population of c 60 million, England (pre-pandemic) only had just over 100,000 General and Acute Hospital Beds and c 4,300 ICU beds and both running close to full

as an aside @HSJnews reported that we have perhaps 3,000 general and acute beds available than this time last year for various reasons, pandemic and "winter pressures" or not.

We struggle to staff many of those beds fully with 100,000 NHS post unfilled inc 1 in 8 in nursing

the pandemic response means we have to separate wards and admission streams into "hot" (proven or suspected covid) and "cold" (covid unlikely or excluded) areas and try to separate staff (though some have to work throughout hospital).
This takes further beds out of availability

England is already right at the bottom of the OECD league of developed nations for hospital beds per 1000 population and ICU beds per 100,000 and well below European average on both and in similar place in "doctors and nurses per 1000 " league table (even if posts filled)

Because it is comparatively rare in England to have completely separate acute/urgent (with full A&E dep and acute admissions) hospital site and elective/planned/procedure/outpatient/cold surgery site . If there are pressures on acute and general beds it impacts that planned work