The data seems to tell an astonishing story – one that needs to be clarified by senior executives and ministers given the choices the Government is making on future growth
See Mark Williamson’s response to former Queen Edith’s ward councillor Sam Davies MBE.
“So the East of England is the second worst region in the worst of the four UK nations and has barely half the capacity per capita of the best provided for nation”
Above – Sam Davies 14 Jan 2025
For those of you persevering with Birdsite, follow Mark as he’s keeping a watch on this. Also, note that the current Accident and Emergency Centre is dealing with four times the number of patients it was designed for.
What does any curious ex-civil-serf do in such situations? We go looking for the source data.
Above: Puffles the dragon fairy (who started life in Whitehall) – “Don’t make me send for the dragon”
Don’t worry – the data sets are all here … And they go all the way back to the Millennium!
***It’s here and I like it!!!***
Actually Millennium-eve was the most over-hyped thing in living memory but a few months after it the NHS started collecting the data that a quarter of a century later we can now play with!
So…Addenbrooke’s-2K (plus the Rosie too), what are we looking at in total?
I crunched the occupancy numbers in the table and for Addenbrooke’s had a 77% occupancy rate.
Fast forward to 2018/19 – the last before the pandemic outbreak, and the total available appears to be 1027, with 970 occupied. Or a 94% occupancy rate.
Does going back a few years make it any better? 2015-16, covering the last days when the former MP for South Cambridgeshire and Health Secretary who brought in the catastrophic reforms in the early 2010s was in the Commons in the Coalition Government, doesn’t make for good reading either. 1019 beds, 960 of them occupied. Again, 94% occupied. When you have occupancy levels like that along with the chronic staff shortages that we’ve had in Cambridge for decades, having to deal with a pandemic is crushing. Also, I got to see what the conditions were like from the inside back in 2017 and again in 2021 from a position I would not wish on anyone.
“How does Addenbrooke’s CUH-NHS look today?”
Total number of beds is ‘just over a thousand’.
Now remember, Addenbrooke’s catchment looks like as below:
Which means that if, all other things held equal (such as health of the population, age disaggregation etc) we should be looking at a number of beds changing with the population levels. But Cambridge’s population level has gone up by around 40,000 people since the Millennium. South Cambridgeshire’s population has gone up by around 30,000, and East Cambridgeshire District has gone up by 15,000, and South Cambridgeshire. If you add the population rises of the other component parts, you are looking at a very significant increase in population and thus demand.
Hence the last time I was on campus for a Cambridge Biomedical Campus meeting I pondered about what happened to the proposed expansion of A&E at Addenbrooke’s. I still have not found the set of documents I believe exist that show detailed proposals of how the site was meant to expand before the Banking Crisis resulted in big cuts, followed by the former MP for South Cambridgeshire becoming Health Secretary and imposing an even bigger mess on the NHS, one it is still struggling to get out of. (I’m still trying to figure out who to put what questions to as well). But if any pro-growth types want to explain why they are making the case for growth without making a very loud case for, and/or why they are not putting time and resources behind the expansion of general hospital services at Addenbrooke’s (or even the construction of a new district general hospital on the other side of Cambridge) then the city is all ears. Noting the ‘call to action’ from the developers’ forum the ex-Health Secretary chairs fails to mention anything about NHS funding in its list of demands to the new government. Which speaks volumes.
If they carry on like that, the developers and the pro-growth interests will fail on their own terms. But will they be the ones who pick up the mess or have to live with the consequences? Let’s see those risk registers people!
Food for thought?
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The Cambridge Town Owl 