NHS chief admits that bed closures need to be reversed

The NHS will need to increase the number of acute hospital beds over the next five years to meet the growing needs of the population, the head of NHS England has said.

In his keynote speech to the NHS Confederation conference in Manchester on 19 June, Simon Stevens indicated that previous cuts to hospital beds would need to be reversed, in what he described as a “significant gear shift” in assumptions about acute bed capacity.

Over the past few years some areas of England have proposed ambitious and controversial reductions …