JUST five percent of NHS Scotland’s patients account for the use of over 70 percent of the health body’s resources, according to a report published today.

The new data also shows that, despite a slight increase in the number of available hospital beds since 2019, the 2020 figures are still 8% down from the 2011 figure.

The National Statistics report from Public Health Scotland (PHS) found that there are 13,156 available beds in Scotland currently, compared to 13,091 last year and 14,345 in 2011.

However, the percentage occupancy has remained relatively stable over the years. In 2019/20, the percentage occupancy for acute specialties was 86.7%.

The annual report also found that the five percent of people termed High Resource Individuals (HRIs) “consume a considerable amount [69%] of hospital and GP prescribing expenditure/resources”.

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It says that, as part of efforts towards an “evidence based healthcare delivery”, a High Health Gain risk prediction tool has been developed to calculate the risk of a person becoming, or continuing to be, an HRI in the next 12 months.

Admissions

The PHS report found that around one in eight (691,000) of the Scottish population had at least one admission into hospital in 2019/20.

Over the same period, there were approximately 8200 admissions of people living outside Scotland, equating to 0.7% of all admissions.

Of those Scots-domiciled people admitted to hospital, 69% (474,000) had one admission. 18% (124,000) had two hospital admissions while 13% (92,000) were admitted three or more times within the year.

In 2019/20, around one person in three (33%) of the Scottish population aged over 75 was admitted at least once to hospital. By way of contrast, around one in twelve (8%) people aged 25-44 were admitted.

The report says that the Scottish population aged 65 and over is expected to increase by 20% from 2020 to 2030. It warns that this demographic shift will have “significant implications for the future demand” on hospital services.

Of the 406,000 people who had at least one emergency admission, 300,000 (74%) had one emergency admission into hospital, around 66,000 (16%) had two emergency admissions and around 40,000 (10%) had three or more.

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In terms of accident and emergency, the number of attendances to A&E has seen a slow increase in new daily attendances over an eleven-year period, from 4303 average daily cases in 2008/09 to 4634 in 2019/20.

The report says there is a “clear and consistent seasonal pattern with peaks in late spring/summer and troughs in winter”.

However, due to the coronavirus response March 2020 saw the lowest (3265) average daily attendance in 2019/20, although “you would normally expect attendances to start to pick up with spring”.

In terms of length of stay in hospital, the most common was a single overnight stay. This was experienced by 24% of all inpatient admissions.

However, the average stay was much longer. In 2019/20 the average length of stay was 3.4 days for elective admissions and 6.7 days for emergency admissions.

The full data publication, including detailed statistics, can be found here.