NHS moving dozens of Covid patients a day in search for ICU beds

Dozens of Covid patients a day are being moved from one hospital to another because of a severe shortage of critical care beds across the NHS.

The NHS transferred a total of 1,079 people needing critical care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to ICUs in different areas in the four weeks to 28 January – an average of 38.5 a day.

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That is far more than the 547 patients – 18.2 a day – who were taken from one hospital to another during the whole of last April, at the height of the first wave of the pandemic.

The second wave has also seen a surge in the number of very sick Covid patients being moved from their home area – sometimes to a hospital far away – to get an ICU bed. That now happens dozens of times a week.

covid patient transfers

The Guardian disclosed last month that critical care patients were being moved from London as far afield as Newcastle, Sheffield and the Midlands because of a lack of capacity in the capital.

A total of 250 people needing critical care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland had to be transferred to an ICU in another area in the four weeks to 28 January – 43 a week. These are transfers that in normal times NHS medical teams do their best to avoid as they can put patients at risk – for example, if their condition worsens during the journey or the ambulance breaks down.

Those 250 longer-distance transfers up until 28 January are more than four times the 60 such cases transferred because of ICU bed shortages during all of last April. The rate has shot up from two a day in April to nine a day last month.

The sharp rise in patient transfers between ICUs is revealed in data that the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) has collected from hospitals and shared with the Guardian.

patients transferred

It does not publish data on where the transfers were from and to, but many in the last two months are known to have started in London, the south-east and east of England.

The ICNARC’s figures cover transfers for “comparable critical care” – that is, because of hospital bed shortages – while longer-distance moves are known as “outside clinical care group” transfers. Each group is made up of hospitals in an area that collaborate on ICU care.

The data also shows that 84 patients were transferred out of area during the first wave, between March and 31 August, and there have been more than five times as many such transfers since 1 September – 444. The proportion of all transfers involving longer-distance moves has risen from 10% in March to 20% in January this year.