Bed management in England

[2] The "bed" in this context represents not simply a place for the patient to sleep, but the services that go with being cared for by the medical facility: admission processing, physician time, nursing care, necessary diagnostic work, appropriate treatment, food, cleaning and so forth.

[1] These can be politically sensitive issues in publicly funded healthcare systems.

In the UK there has been concern over inaccurate and sometimes fraudulently manipulated waiting list statistics,[7] and claims that "the current A&E target is simply not achievable without the employment of dubious management tactics.

About 18,000 of the 101,259 acute and general beds in English NHS hospitals were occupied by "super stranded" patients in May 2018.

[10] In February 2019, NHS Scotland calculated that 1,419 people had their discharge from hospital delayed in that month, most commonly for health and social care reasons.