Available Beds by Specialty & NHS Board of Treatment

Information presented covers financial years 1997/98 to 2006/07, and provides details on average available staffed beds, occupancy rates, length of stay and throughput by specialty at Scotland level and by NHS Board of treatment.  Examples of the type of information that can be extracted from the data are shown below.

-	The updated figures for year ending 31st March 2007 should still be considered provisional.  They show a slight decrease in the average number of available staffed beds in acute specialties to 17,439, from 17,495 in year ending 31st March 2006.
-	The occupancy rate of acute beds has been fairly constant over the last seven years at between 81-83%.
-	In NHS Lothian, Orthopaedic patients stayed in hospital, on average, for 6.1 days in 2006/07, a reduction from 6.8 days in 2005/06.
-	There are 180 Neurosurgery beds in Scotland, over half of which (94 beds) are in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde.

Statistics showing Available Beds by Specialty & NHS Board of Treatment (MS Excel document - 1MB)

Trends by NHS Board of Treatment  (MS Excel document - 1MB)

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Notes

Specialty definitions in Scotland were revised from 1st April 1997. As a result directly comparable information prior to 1997/98 is not available and, hence, not included in this summary.

NHS Argyll & Clyde ceased to exist at 1st April 2006.  NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and NHS Highland board areas were revised to include Argyll & Clyde.  Data is shown for these new boards in 2007, and for the previous years by mapping Argyll & Clyde data to include with Greater Glasgow and Highland data.

For comparable information in England, please refer to the Department of Health website using the following link:

English Bed Statistics