Labour says NHS hospitals ran out of children’s intensive care beds more than a thousand times this winter

Full Story in The Independent 13 March 2018

The equivalent of ten children’s intensive care units a day are unable to find a single spare bed in the latest warning sign that health services are “on the brink”, according to Labour analysis.

Winter data, published weekly by NHS England since 20 November, shows that NHS trusts declared they had run out of paediatric intensive care (PIC) beds on 1,058 occasions this winter.

This includes some smaller trusts which have only had available beds on three of the 105 days of the winter so far.

Just six NHS trusts, out of the 46 who have operational intensive care beds, have managed to avoid reporting hitting full capacity, something which Labour links to bed numbers being at the lowest levels since 2012.