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The Scottish National Party (SNP) have said that the number of hospital beds in Scotland needs to increase after figures, obtained by the party under the Freedom of Information legislation, showed there were 39,668 beds in Scotland's hospitals in 1996-7.
But by March this year, the figure had fallen to 28,257.
The SNP said that this meant the NHS in Scotland now had proportionately fewer acute beds than the UK as a whole.
The Scottish Executive pointed out that changes to the way people are treated, with more cared for in the community rather than in institutions, was the reality behind the figures.
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP's Holyrood leader, said: "The Labour and Lib Dem government's policy of cutting the number of beds in the NHS has gone on for far too long.
"We should now reverse this process and start to increase the number of acute staffed beds to the benefit of the patients of Scotland”.
Lewis Macdonald, the deputy health minister, said calling for more NHS beds "overlooks basic facts and simply fails to understand the modern NHS".
He said the bulk of the drop in bed numbers was related to people with conditions such as learning disabilities. These people were now treated in the community and not in hospitals, which Mr Macdonald said was "a much more dignified way to care for people".
According to the Executive, between 1998 and 2006, the number of learning disability beds dropped from 2,888 to 495, psychiatric beds fell from 9,076 to 6,282, and geriatric long-stay beds were cut from 5,565 to 2,982. Acute beds fell from 18,590 to 17,179.
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