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Health Care-Associated Infections

There is actually no correlation between high bed occupancy rates and levels of MRSA, as the hon. Lady well knows. The Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, for example, has a bed occupancy rate of 92 per cent., but it has cut the number of MRSA cases by well above the national average. As to the suggestion that we should set a national target for bed occupancy rates, I had thought that the Opposition were supposed to be against national targets. We have a bed occupancy rate of about 84 per cent. and we think that high levels of bed occupancy are wrong, but the real issue is how best to manage the beds, rather than providing simple statistics on bed occupancy.