Where next for overnight stay admissions, length of stay and bed days?

The ‘Money Matters’ series is intended to be a pragmatic view of the forces regulating NHS activity and costs. This month’s analysis is intended to give insight into that core of the hospital sector, the acute overnight stay bed pool. As you will be aware overnight bed numbers have substantially declined between 2002/03 and 2014/15 (-71% Learning Difficulty, -35% Mental Illness, -22% General & Acute, -16% Maternity), and zero day stay emergency admissions have increased to around 1.6 million ‘admissions’ per annum leading to significant corruption of the average length of stay (LOS), and creating the illusion that LOS is plummeting (thereby justifying the large reduction in overnight stay beds). However, the reality presented in Table 1 is somewhat sobering.