The NHS needs 13,000 more beds across the UK to improve “grim” A&E waits, ambulance response times and handover delays outside hospitals, a report has found. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s Beds in the NHS report, published on Tuesday, said the health service has lost almost 25,000 beds across the UK since 2010-11.
It said the UK has the second lowest number of beds per 1,000 people in the EU at 2.42 and had seen the third largest drop in beds per 1,000 population in the EU between 2000 and 2021 at 40.7%. The loss of beds has led to a “sharp increase” in A&E waiting times, ambulance handover delays, delayed ambulance response times, cancelled elective surgeries and “unsafe” bed occupancy levels, the report added.
England-wide NHS data for April shows ambulance trusts across the country missing a raft of targets, including too-slow response times to the most urgent incidents. NHS England figures also show A&Es have been seeing record numbers of so-called trolley waits and record low performance against the four-hour A&E waiting-times target.
