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The number of NHS beds has fallen by a third over the past 20 years as a result of improvements in care, including better joint working with social services, the NHS Confederation has claimed.

In a report this week, the confederation dismissed the assumption that bed count was a measure of care quality and called for a debate over the share of future NHS investment that should go into hospitals.

The report said joint working between health and social care, through initiatives such as intermediate care and sitting services, had created added capacity in the community.

Why we need fewer hospital beds from www.nhsconfed.org