Capacity planning for acute hospital inpatient care and adult critical care in England: a descriptive study using hospital administrative data

BACKGROUND: At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March and April, 2020, there was a focus on accommodating an anticipated surge of patients with COVID-19 in acute hospitals. We aimed to estimate the potential for freeing up capacity in acute hospitals in England. METHODS: In this descriptive study, we used admitted patient and adult critical care records from Hospital Episode Statistics (a database containing details of attendances at National Health Service acute hospitals in England) from 2018/19 to estimate historical numbers of inpatients. Each admission was grouped into emergency, maternity, and elective, with elective split by the presence or absence of cancer in the primary diagnosis. We further stratified the population by age and frailty, which we estimated with an index using International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (tenth revision) codes in diagnosis fields. We used the (then current) National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) 2020 guidance on critical care pathways as a framework to examine four scenarios that limited access to beds for specific patient groups. This study was approved by the Secretary of State and the Health Research Authority under Regulation 5 of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 to hold confidential data and analyse them for research purposes (CAG ref 15/CAG/0005). We have approval to use these data for research into the quality and safety of health care, from the London–South East Ethics Committee (REC ref 20/LO/0611). FINDINGS: Between April 1, 2018, and March 31, 2019, 8 957 521 adults were admitted (7 372 040 [82·3%] emergency, 295 598 [3·3%] elective with cancer, 850 964 [9·5%] elective without cancer, and 438 919 [4·9%] maternity admissions), and 974 038 critical care episodes were recorded. Our analysis suggested that up to 70% of all acute inpatient beds could be released if only maternity, cancer, and emergency patients younger than 65 years were admitted; if non-frail patients aged 65 years and older were also admitted, 41% of beds could be freed up. Similarly, if only maternity, cancer, and emergency patients younger than 65 years were admitted to critical care beds, that might free up to 56% of adult critical care beds; if non-frail patients aged 65 years and older were also admitted, 30% of critical care beds could be freed up. INTERPRETATION: Given a crisis in health-care capacity, it seemed appropriate to model some difficult options based on NICE guidelines. We identified scope for freeing up total acute and critical care beds by postponing elective non-cancer admissions as a short-term measure during the first wave of COVID-19 (March to June, 2020) in England. The NICE guidelines were criticised by patient groups and have since been updated (NG191). Administrative data can inform planning for future crises albeit with limitations on estimating individual patient need, and deep social and ethical considerations. Our estimates were incorporated into a modelling tool for hospital provision during the pandemic. FUNDING: Dr Foster Intelligence.