Mental Health Services: Hospital Beds
(asked on 25th February 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of mental health bed availability.
The most recent information on mental illness bed availability is shown in the following table.
Year | Period | Available | Occupied | Occupancy rate |
2018/19 | Q1 | 18,395 | 16,519 | 89.8% |
2018/19 | Q2 | 18,311 | 16,431 | 89.7% |
2018/19 | Q3 | 18,389 | 16,285 | 88.6% |
2018/19 | Q4 | 18,368 | 16,378 | 89.2% |
2019/20 | Q1 | 18,270 | 16,375 | 89.6% |
2019/20 | Q2 | 18,179 | 16,284 | 89.6% |
2019/20 | Q3 | 18,097 | 16,187 | 89.4% |
Notes:
- The data are very limited in terms of what they tell us about mental health bed availability and should therefore be treated with caution for the following reasons:
- The ‘mental illness’ category covers a huge range of inpatient mental health settings which provide very different services for people with different needs. As such, it does not provide the granularity of information required to identify where there might be particular pressures in the mental health system.
- They only cover beds in services that are consultant-led.
- It is very difficult to assess the accuracy of the aggregate data submitted and the accompanying guidance has not been updated since the Department published it in 2010.
Source: NHS England: KH03 data collection