Hospital Bed Space Availability 'Still Falling'

There are less and less bed spaces available across all services in NI hospitals.

As pressure mounts on the availability of accident & emergency facilities in south Belfast and also in Lisburn, data from the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety published today shows a fall.

The figures cover 2010/11 Inpatient and Outpatient Hospital Statistics and show that in the period between 2006/07 and 2010/11, the average number of available beds decreased by 15.6% (1,244) from 7,976 to 6,732.

Similarly when comparing the average number of available beds during 2009/10 and 2010/11, there is also a decrease of 7.4% from 7,274 beds in 2009/10 to 6,732 beds in 2010/11.

The greatest decrease in average available beds was evident in the Mental Health programme of care, which decreased by 174 beds (-17.5%) from 995 in 2009/10 to 821 in 2010/11.

The new statistics also record there were 583,599 inpatient and day case admissions to hospital in Northern Ireland.

This was an increase of 83 on the number of admissions during 2009/10 but was up 5.0% (27,602) on the number admitted during 2006/07.

Of the 583,599 patients admitted to hospital in 2010/11, 50.5% (294,639) were admitted to hospital as an inpatient while the remaining 49.5% (288,960) were admitted for day case treatment.

The day case rate for acute services has steadily increased from 70.3% in 2006/07 to 74.2% in 2010/11.

The greatest increase occurred between 2009/10 and 2010/11 when the day case rate increased by 1.8 percentage points from 72.4% to 74.2%.

The occupancy rate in hospitals in Northern Ireland is also on the rise with news that it was 83.0% during 2010/11 - an increase from 81.8% in 2009/10 and a decrease from 83.3% in 2006/07.

The average length of stay in hospitals has also fallen consistently each year from 8.2 days in 2006/07 to 6.9 days in 2010/11.

In the last year average length of stay fell by 0.3 days from 7.2 days in 2009/10 to 6.9 days in 2010/11.

Other data shows that the specialties with the highest proportion of admissions were nephrology with 17.9% (104,548) of all admissions, followed by general medicine with 13.6% (79,170) and general surgery with 11.7% (68,331).

Consultants

During 2010/11, 1,502,611 patients were seen at consultant led services within health service hospitals in Northern Ireland. This was a decrease of -0.1% (918) on the 1,503,529 seen during the previous year.

Some 31.5% (473,793) of patients seen during 2010/11 were new attendances, the other 68.5% (1,028,818) being reviews, resulting in a new to review ratio of 1:2.2.

Compared to 2009/10, new attendances decreased by 1.6% (7,552), whereas review attendances increased by 0.6% (6,634).

Interestingly, patients missed a total of 171,740 appointments during 2010/11, giving a 'Did Not Attend (DND)' rate of 10.3. This was the same as the comparable rate for 2009/10.

In counterpoint, hospitals cancelled 183,597 appointments, a hospital cancellation rate of 10.9, which was down 0.7 points on the rate reported for 2009/10 (11.6).

See: Poots Meets MLAs Over Casualty Services

(BMcC/GK)