香港六合彩

30% of hospitals in England reached their maximum occupancy levels for beds with mechanical ventilation support during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, while the flagship Nightingale hospitals were under-utilised, according to a new study.聽Academics from the University of Warwick, he Alan Turing Institute, the University of Exeter and 香港六合彩 Institute of Health Informatics are calling for lessons to be learned from the early stage of the crisis, so that the second wave of the virus can be better managed in hospitals.

The study is currently undergoing peer review, however, the growing concerns around bed occupancy and the second wave have prompted the authors to speak up about this work now. Study authors undertook a descriptive analysis聽of the daily bed occupancy rates for hospitals across England during the first wave of the virus. They analysed data from daily situation reports from individual hospitals made to the Scientific Pandemic Influence Group on Modelling (SPI-M) by NHS England between 27 March and 5 June 2020.聽They found that although occupancy of beds compatible with mechanical ventilation never exceeded 62% at the national level, 52 (30%) hospitals across England reached 100% saturation at some point during the first wave of the pandemic. This聽suggests that while national figures always showed spare bed capacity, the unequal distribution of demand meant that despite this capacity lots of hospitals reached unsafe occupancy levels.聽In addition, the researchers examined how many hospitals exceeded bed occupancy thresholds recommended by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (85%) and NHS Improvement (92%). Over half exceeded the Royal College of Emergency Medicine鈥檚 threshold, with 41.6% also exceeding the higher NHS Improvement threshold.聽However, when the researchers analysed the figures at geographical level, based on the sustainability and transformation partnerships that they form part of, they found that there was almost always spare capacity. This means that there were nearby hospitals that could have eased pressure on those exceeding their recommended bed occupancy.

The research team argues that by making data on bed occupancy available in real-time spare capacity could have been better utilised and risk of over-burdening specific parts of the NHS lessened. Managing resources better must be important facet of the response to the second wave of the coronavirus, especially as it appears likely to coincide with the additional demands on beds seen during the winter months.

Lead author Dr Bilal Mateen,聽Honorary Researcher with Warwick Medical School聽and Clinical Technology Lead聽at the Wellcome Trust said: 鈥淗igh-quality information available to front-line staff is a vital component of an effective public health response, and here we demonstrate that England has that data, the question is, why aren鈥檛 we using it?鈥�

The research also examined capacities of the Nightingale field hospitals, created to provide extra beds to support local NHS services during the Covid-19 pandemic. These never exceeded 1路23% bed occupancy and as these were located in areas of particular high demand on services, such as London and Birmingham, were well placed to ease pressure on existing hospitals. Private hospitals also made beds available to support local NHS services but at their peak only 18.7% of that capacity was used.聽Professor聽Spiros Denaxas, co-investigator on the study, said "Data and metadata generated and captured as part of routine clinical care should be linked and made available to researchers, policy makers and public health experts in order to deliver actionable insights to frontline healthcare professionals and better guide the NHS's response to the second (and any subsequent) waves of COVID-19."

This paper was authored by:聽Bilal A聽Mateen,聽Harrison聽Wilde,聽John m聽Dennis,聽Andrew聽Duncan,聽Nicholas John Meyrick聽Thomas,聽Andrew P聽McGovern,聽Spiros聽Denaxas,聽Matt J聽Keeling, Sebastian J聽Vollmer.聽doi:聽https: