Norovirus outbreak forced trusts to close almost 75,000 hospital beds
THE scale of the norovirus outbreak this winter forced trusts to close almost 75,000 hospital beds, new analysis shows.
Closures stood at a five year high with 5,722 beds closed each week on average.
On the single worst-affected day more than 1,200 had to be taken out of service, equivalent to around two entire hospitals being closed, according to research by the Royal College of Nursing highlighting the seismic impact of the bug.
Norovirus is a highly contagious infection producing symptoms of vomiting and diarrhoea.
It is often brought into hospitals by patients who have picked up the infection in schools, homes and care homes.
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When the Health Service is under the extra pressure of winter, the loss of even a few hundred beds a day can have severe consequences for hospitals
When hospital patients contract the illness, or are suspected of having done so, they should be placed in isolation.
But the bed occupied by the patient and others around it also have to be closed and are lost from the total daily bed stock.
The RCN said the acute crisis had meant hospitals found it harder to admit new patients, particularly those being transferred as emergencies from A&E departments, adding to the winter crisis witnessed across the NHS in England.
RCN chief executive and general secretary Janet Davies said: “Nursing staff work extremely hard to prevent the norovirus infection spreading.
“But with so many beds being lost to the illness this winter, bed stocks are reaching unsustainably low levels.
Norovirus: How the virus is spread
“When the Health Service is under the extra pressure of winter, the loss of even a few hundred beds a day can have severe consequences for hospitals.
“This reduction in beds then makes it much harder for A&E departments to get patients admitted to wards quickly as emergencies.
“It’s no surprise most Trusts aren’t meeting the A&E four hour target when norovirus is having this big an impact on bed stocks.”
Bed occupancy rates averaged 94 per cent this winter - above the recommended safe limit of 85 per cent.
RCN analysis shows 74,390 beds were closed over the course of the winter with a daily average of 817. The weekly and daily averages are each 17 per cent higher than last winter and 32 per cent higher than the average across the previous four winters.
The single worst-affected week was the week ending December 10, 2017 when 7,862 beds had to be closed. The following week 7,500 beds were lost.
Although the number of beds lost appeared to be falling in January and the first week of February in the last three weeks the number has been steadily increasing with last week’s total of 6,643 beds lost the third highest this winter.
Performance figures show the target of seeing 95 per cent of A&E patients within four hours has not been met since July 2015.
In a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May in January consultants in charge of emergency departments in 68 acute hospitals across England and Wales said “current level of safety compromise is at times intolerable, despite the best efforts of staff”.
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They said an average wait of up to 12 hours from the decision to admit a patient until they were transferred to a bed was not uncommon and in some emergency departments 50 people at a time were waiting [for a bed].
The leaked letter said: “The facts remain that the NHS is severely and chronically underfunded.
“Thousands of patients are waiting in ambulances for hours as hospitals lack adequate space.
“Some of our own personal experiences range from over 120 patients a day managed in corridors, some dying prematurely.”
