People are getting better care despite NHS bed numbers falling by a third in the last 20 years say the NHS Confederation

Stakeholder Response: Age Concern

A spokesman for Age Concern said: "It is imperative that the pressure to speed up an older person's discharge from hospital is not at the expense of their treatment.

"The growing number of older people readmitted to hospital indicates poor hospital discharge planning and is creating a 'revolving door' in the NHS for some older people."

Stakeholder Response: Health Emergency

Geoff Martin, head of campaigns at Health Emergency, said: "At a time when over 15,000 jobs have been lost from the NHS in just three months, and with major cutbacks in NHS services being driven through up and down the country, it beggars belief that the organisation whose members are responsible for the crisis management undermining the NHS are advocating more of the same.

"The argument that hospital beds can be slashed in their thousands without impacting on patient care is nothing new – it’s a quack theory that’s been doing the rounds for at least two decades but the hard truth is that it doesn’t work.

"We’re all for expanding primary and community based health services but the idea that we should fund the expansion by closing hospital beds and casualty departments is dangerous nonsense.

"The NHS Confederation are trying to make bed cuts and job losses respectable as more and more hospitals pile in with multi-million pound panic cutbacks. The idea that this rubbish will wash with the public is laughable."

Stakeholder Response: NHS Confederation

Dr Gill Morgan, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: "More patients are being treated faster and more effectively than ever before by the NHS.

"The number of actual beds has steadily reduced, yet the amount of care the service is able to deliver has dramatically increased."

"We need to move away from this fixation with bricks and mortar. The world is changing, patients' needs are changing and the NHS is adapting to meet those needs.

"It’s not surprising that people believe that more beds mean better patient care - this has been the assumption for many years.

"We must start judging the NHS by the number of people we make better and keep well, not by the amount of beds which are, after all, only hospital furniture.

"Developments in technology and changes in the way treatment is delivered mean we simply need fewer beds.

"We need an informed debate about whether beds, bricks and mortar are always the best place to be putting valuable NHS cash.

"The NHS Confederation believes that we must judge the investment of taxpayers’ money by assessing improvements in treatments for patients rather than by counting beds."