Hospitals in England remained extraordinarily busy last week with 96% of NHS trusts operating above a ‘safe’ level of occupancy, according to analysis of weekly winter pressure figures from NHS England.
Only five trusts – all of them specialist hospitals without a general purpose, 24-hour A&E department – managed to keep their adult general and acute wards at an occupancy rate of 85% or lower, which is the threshold widely considered to be a safe limit of busyness.
On average, hospitals were 95.1% full in the week ending 22 January, which was an improvement on the previous week when occupancy rates were at 95.7%. The week before that, wards were 96% full.
The proportion of hospitals reaching above 85% though was a deterioration on the previous week, when 93% of trusts (125 out of 134) were above the threshold. And wards were on average much busier than the same week last year.
Over the course of the week, 12 trusts ran out of beds completely, reaching 100% capacity on at least one occasion. The figures are based on snapshots taken at 8am each day during winter.
NationalWorld has analysed the data to find which hospital trusts were the most overwhelmed with patients last week – including how many days they ran out of beds over the seven days.
1. George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust had an occupancy rate of 100%, with all 299 of its adult general and acute beds taken every day across the week.
Photo: Getty Images
2. Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust had an occupancy rate above 99.9%, having run out of beds completely six times.
Photo: Getty Images
3. Whittington Health NHS Trust had an occupancy rate of 99.8%, with an average of 244 of its 245 beds taken across the week. It ran out of beds completely five times.
Photo: Tony Peacock / Whittington Hospital Magdala Avenue N19 5NF / CC BY-SA 2.0
4. Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust had an occupancy rate of 99.5%, with an average of 683 of its 686 beds taken across the week.
Photo: Ian Capper