MORE than a third of patients in East Lancashire's hospital beds are well enough to go home, an NHS survey has found.

A one-day study of more than 650 patients found 37 per cent were waiting to be discharged.

An NHS boss today said the findings showed moves to cut a third of the region's beds by 2009 would not damage patient care as wards could see a greater turnaround of people.

But health officials were warned that patients would be sucked into a "black hole" once they left hospital because community services were inadequate.

A team from the Cumbria and Lancashire NHS Strategic Health Authority, which oversees hospitals in the two counties, carried out the survey in February at Blackburn Royal Infirmary, Blackburn Queen's Park Hospital and Burnley General Hospital.

Of the 396 patients counted on the Blackburn sites, 146, or 37 per cent, were found to be medically fit for discharge.

At Burnley 97 out of 262, again 37 per cent, could have gone home on the day, the survey found.

Of the total, 27 were waiting for care outside of hospital, either in community hospitals or through social services.

Meanwhile 45 had been given a future date when they could leave while 63 were waiting for hospital services such as a doctor's assessment.

The Trust is to cut 417 inpatient beds, a third, by 2009, with 267 going by April next year.

Dena Marshall, chief operating officer at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust said: "There have been concerns expressed about the bed reductions we are proposing and what we have tried to demonstrate is there are too many patients in hospital who do not need to be there.

"If we get our systems and processes much slicker we believe there are opportunities for reducing beds. This is not about service reduction, it is about changing the way we do things."

Changes to these "systems and processes" include allowing nurses as well doctors to discharge people and getting patients more quickly assessed by a consultant so they can be given the all clear, she said.

She said care outside of hospital must be there to take some patients on, and added: "We need to work with our partners to make sure that if the services aren't in place we have a mechanism for setting them up."

But Caroline Collins, spokesman for the Royal College of Nursing, warned: "The reality is a lot of people need these beds because otherwise they are going out into a great black hole and a revolving door system where they become so ill they come back to hospital."

A breakdown of the 267 bed cuts seen by the Lancashire Evening Telegraph shows 172 are in Burnley General Hospital.

Burnley Council leader Coun Stuart Caddy said: "I am very sceptical about this. You never know from one month to the next what the demand on the hospital is going to be like. We are definitely opposed to the bed cuts."

Tim Ellis, spokesman for Unison, said: "The trust needs to have concrete measures in place which will lead to shorter stays. Anything else will be a threat to health care because people will be waiting for beds or will be discharged early."