NHS England COVID Hospital Bed Use

THIS is the kind of data that needs to be made publicly available – putting #covid in context! 👇🏼

Unfortunately though, this is for NHS staff eyes only. Not today though. 😉

🧑🏻‍🔬I saw this yesterday, but was hesitant to send, because I couldn’t validate the source, albeit the sharer was a well-respected healthcare professional.

🔍 Searching the Internet for an hour, including reverse searching the image on Google… and nothing.

🏥 Just a few hours ago, it was confirmed as being from an internal-only NHS web application for reporting service metrics.

🤏🏼 What it shows is a TINY percentage of Mechanical Ventilation and Oxygen beds are servicing those with COVID – either confirmed (+ve test) or suspected (symptoms but awaiting test result).

😯 It shows that 95%+ of the above two bed types are NOT being used for COVID.

👍🏼 It also shows a 13-20% cushion across the bed types, which is normal in a well-managed healthcare operation. You don’t want lots of wasted space/equipment/personnel capacity, but you also need a reasonable burst capacity.

🧮 Through 2010Q1 – 2020 Q1 (10 years, 40 quarters), the average utilisation for General & Acute NHS beds has been 88.3% – i.e. 11.7% spare capacity.

👍🏼 So, looks like we have a little more spare hospital bed capacity now than we have had over the last 10 years – and that’s inclusive of the current COVID-related inpatients. I suspect it does not include Nightingale temporary capacity.

🤏🏼 Moreover, it’s clear that COVID-related illness continues to be a tiny proportion of those that get poorly and need hospital assistance in this country.

Just like the Mortality data we share every week…

💝 We need to offer more genuine sympathy and consideration to the ~9,000 people that die EVERY WEEK from all other causes…

We need to get a grip, and accept this unavoidable reality of life. We need a reality check.

#ContextMatters #FactsNotFear 

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SOURCES

• HISTORICAL NHS BED UTILISATION (many data tables)

The Original Facebook Post