Nottingham hospitals plan: 'Hundreds of beds need to close'

The aim is to cut 100 beds annually for the next two years at the Queen's Medical Centre and the City Hospital

A local NHS restructuring plan to save £600m over the next five years includes a move to cut 200 hospital beds despite current overcrowding.

The cuts proposed - totalling 11.8% of beds at Nottingham's two main hospitals - would happen over the next two years.

Health leaders said the bed shortage was caused by patients who could not leave hospitals because of a lack of community support.

The proposed cuts are part of the county's NHS "sustainability" plan.

'Relentless pressure'

The bed reduction is "contingent on other models of care being put in place", a spokesman for Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust said.

The plan also called for "taking beds out of the active care setting by moving them into the community".

Trust chairman Louise Scull said the current was sustainable unless changes were made.

"The status quo is simply not an option if we are to deliver a financially and clinically sustainable health and social care system for our patients in Nottinghamshire.

"Our hospital services are operating under relentless pressure… demand is rising inexorably year on year, she said."

Figures from early 2016 show that Nottingham's accident and emergency four-hour admission rate was 74.7% - missing the national target of 95%.

The plan calls for more people to be cared for at home or in the community in order to relieve pressure on hospital beds

Mrs Scull said in a blog published to coincide with the release of the NHS Sustainability and Transformation plan for Nottinghamshire: "Without different community services being in place as an alternative to hospital care and without work to reduce demand on our hospitals, this won't be achievable."

Phil Teall, of Healthwatch Nottingham, said cutting 200 hospital beds was "hugely ambitious" and it could not happen without "investing in community-based services".

"People are going to be concerned when their hospital is already under huge amounts of pressure as to how that number of beds can be removed from the system," he said.