THE average cost of running a hospital bed is soaring year-onyear and has now smashed the £1,000 a night barrier, the Advertiser can reveal.

Each bed cost Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT), which runs hospitals in Andover, Basingstoke and Winchester, £1,021 per day in the 2013/14 financial year.

The figure was calculated by dividing the total cost, including staff, equipment and administration, by the number of beds across the three hospitals.

While the number of beds fluctuates at different times and the figure does not reflect the differences where the care of patients on some wards is far more expensive than on other wards, the costs have been spiralling.

The average bed cost the trust £992 per day in the 2012/13 financial year, and £973 in 2011/12.

Mary Edwards, chief executive of the trust, said: “Increased costs are the result of inflation – for both pay costs and all the other costs associated with caring for patients in our hospitals.

“Everyone’s bills increase year on year and our hospitals are not immune to increasing running costs.”

The Advertiser reported in May that the trust finished the last financial year nearly £4million in debt.

The deficit compared to a predicted surplus of £1.5m, meaning the HHFT ended the year £5.4m behind its target.

It spent nearly £4m on agency staff in 2014/2015, compared to just £700,000 the year before.

It also emerged that HHFT had been fined more than £1.6m for the year by the local clinical commissioning groups, after incurring financial penalties for missing targets.