Shropshire Star

Doctor speaks out about bed shortages in Shropshire

A Shropshire-based GP has spoken out about the problems being caused by a lack of available beds in hospitals.

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Dr Mary McCarthy, who works at Marden Medical Practice in Sutton, Shrewsbury, said the county had fewer than 200 hospital beds available per 100,000 people.

The figure lagged behind the national average and much further below the figures for countries across Europe, she said.

Dr Mary McCarthy made the claims during the British Medical Association's annual representative meeting in Belfast.

The meeting was told patients in hospitals across the UK are being harmed because there are not enough beds.

The UK is lagging behind Romania, Austria, France, Germany and Belgium in terms of bed numbers, doctors said.

Representatives at the meeting said that the dwindling number of beds needs to be "urgently re-evaluated".

A motion which claimed "trends in reducing hospital beds have gone too far and need to be urgently re-evaluated" was backed by overwhelming majority of delegates.

Dr McCarthy said: "Hospital beds in the UK have been steadily eroded without the corresponding increase in social care that is needed to support this move.

"The UK has less than 300 beds per 100,000 population and in Shropshire, where I am, it's less than 200.

"In the Irish Republic a few miles south of here it's about 500, in Belgium it's over 650, in France it's over 700, in Germany it's over 800, in Austria it's over 700, in Romania it's over 600.

"Do we really need to keep cutting beds? Are we not finding that our hospitals are bulging at the seams with people who should be there but are discharged home too early and unsafely?"

Dr Michael Hardingham, an ear, nose and throat surgeon from Cheltenham who presented the motion, said: "Patients are being harmed because they are being sent home as there are no beds available."

"For those of us who work in surgical wards, we know only too well what it's like to come in in the morning and find orthopaedic outliers, which means one can't get one's own patients into beds and have to send them home."

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