Bed Loss & Bedlam (part 1)

A look at bed occupancy within NHS England over the last 13 years

There is a factor far more deadly than SARS-COV-2 and that is government policy. The nation was always going to pay for closure of health services in terms of elevated levels of pain, misery and death, and this was always going to have both immediate and long term effects.

Being a potential confounding factor in studies of vaccine harm/benefit I chewed on a German pencil until an idea came… I could derive a bed loss index for NHS England using bed occupancy data provided in a bundle of spreadsheets sitting on this page.

Before COVID (B.C.)

Before COVID came along analysts had to make do with quarterly estimates for bed occupancy that covered day and night beds as well as beds by speciality (general & acute, learning disabilities, maternity and mental illness). When COVID arrived analysts were provided with daily estimates of COVID and non-COVID bed use as well as quarterly estimates. We can merge the two series and take a look at occupancy since 2010. Have a squizz at this pleasing plot: