"It's less about counting beds but about what hospitals do and how they do it. Hospitals can become smaller because you can give people the same standard and often a better range of care without them being physically present. That [would produce] lower long-term running costs and a system that's financially sustainable. Hospitals shouldn't be made smaller just for the sake of it but because how and where we deliver secondary care no longer needs to be confined to a hospital bed."
"Hospitals need to become smaller, with fewer beds, to help save the NHS from its permacrisis, a thinktank has said. The role hospitals play needs to undergo a fundamental reinvention to help them escape the overcrowding that has become widespread over the last decade, according to the thinktank Re:State. Politicians and NHS leaders will have to be prepared to push through a potentially controversial programme of downsizing hospitals for the service to remain viable, it adds."
Hospitals need to become smaller and shed thousands of beds to help save the NHS from its permacrisis and escape widespread overcrowding. A massive expansion of diagnostic tests, outpatient appointments and treatments delivered at home or in community settings will reduce the need for inpatient stays. Downsizing hospitals can save billions, improve patient outcomes, lower long-term running costs and relieve pressure on overworked staff. Politicians and NHS leaders will need to implement potentially controversial programmes to reconfigure secondary care toward faster, preventative, community-based delivery.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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