Professor John Robertson OBA

Hospital Stats and Facts activist Dr Steve Taylor (https://x.com/DrSteveTaylor) posted the above today to draw attention the correlation between falling bed numbers and worsening A&E in NHS England.

The contrast with Scotland, which of course, has far better A&E performance could not be more stark:

The most recent data available on hospital beds per head of population for England, Scotland, and Wales comes from a mix of sources, primarily from 2023 and 2024. Below are the figures based on the best available information:

• England: Approximately 2.31 hospital beds per 1,000 people. This is derived from 130,528 hospital beds for a population of about 56.6 million. https://www.interweavetextiles.com/how-many-hospital-beds-uk/ https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers
• Scotland: Approximately 4.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people, based on 20,533 beds for a population of around 5.4 million. https://www.interweavetextiles.com/how-many-hospital-beds-uk/
• Wales: Approximately 3.34 hospital beds per 1,000 people, calculated from 10,400 beds for a population of about 3.1 million. https://www.interweavetextiles.com/how-many-hospital-beds-uk/

Scotland has, per head of population almost twice as many hospital beds as England and around 405 more than Wales.

This shows in the larger number waiting more than 4 hours in A&E and the far larger number waiting more than 12 hours. See:

Shocking FOUR times as many, per head, wait more than 12 hours in NHS England, than in NHS Scotland, Type 1 A&E departments

NHS Scotland’s Type 1 Emergency departments 4 hour waits improve for third month to beat NHS England by 10% and longer waits fall to the lowest in more than two years