THE Scottish NHS axed 80 beds in a year - the equivalent of a small hospital.

New figures show the health service north of the border had 13609 beds in June this year compared to 13689 a year earlier and 14,111 six years ago.

Questions have been raised about the reduction in capacity at a time when accident and emergency departments are struggling to hit waiting times targets - a sign there is a shortage of beds on wards for sick people to move into.

Jill Vickerman, national director of the British Medical Association Scotland, said: “It is concerning that 80 beds have been lost in the year from June 2014 to June 2015 without a parallel process to increase capacity in primary care in the community at a time of growing numbers of older people and related need. As winter approaches, there is always increased pressure on hospitals to treat patients as quickly and safely as they can. The government and NHS boards need to work with GPs in the community, and with hospital staff to ensure that these bed cuts do not erode quality patient care.”

The figures, which exclude details for NHS Grampian and NHS Highland as new data systems meant they were unable to provide hospital bed numbers, show growing capacity in some areas of healthcare but shrinkage elsewhere. Geriatric medicine, old age psychiatry, general surgery and general medicine were all fields which lost beds between June 2014 and 2015.

Ellen Hudson, RCN Scotland Associate Director, expressed concern that without better community services, hospitals with fewer beds faced greater strain.

She said: “The Scottish Government’s ambition is for more people to be cared for closer to home, but to achieve that ambition you also need to invest in community services so people can be cared for there, rather than having to go into hospital. Yet the Scottish Government’s own auditor said just last year that there’s a lack of evidence of progress in shifting resources into the community. If this doesn’t happen, it just puts more and more pressure on hospitals, with fewer beds, but more and more patients because of a lack of services for them to be cared for safely at home.”

Trends in capacity also vary around Scotland, according to the figures.

In NHS Lanarkshire almost 100 beds disappeared between June 2014 and 2015.

In NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, where three hospitals merged into the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital this May, the total number of hospital beds has increased. Certain specialities appear to have lost capacity - bed figures for general medicine have dropped by 36 in the region - but the health board said this was due to the beds being put into other departments.

In a statement NHS GGC said: "As part of ongoing service design beds have been allocated to subspecialties. For example, the number of cardiology beds has increased from 129 to 150, the number of gastroenterology beds from 24 to 48, and respiratory beds has increased from 96 to 122."

"Across the health board we have increased the beds for unscheduled care given the growth in emergency admissions that have been experienced in recent years."

The loss of 80 beds represents a 0.6% decrease in ward space across Scotland.

Health Secretary Shona Robison said: “Care patterns have changed over the years, with more care delivered in the community, shorter hospital stays and more same day surgery without the need for any overnight stay, which is good for patients.

“This is reflected in the statistics, which show the corresponding reduction of 78 surgical beds, as patients undergoing surgery often do not require to stay in hospital. Meanwhile, the number of acute medical beds have remained steady over the last five years – and numbers remaining stable compared to the same period last year."

She added that the data did not include additional step down beds which have been created in Scotland as an interim support measure for the frail. She said 200 of these have been created this year alone.