Health Minister Andy Burnham said if all hospitals improved productivity and efficiency to the levels achieved by the top 25 per cent, resources worth a total of £2.2 billion could be unlocked across the country. The data comes from a report entitled Better Care, Better Value.

The report outlines areas where money is being wasted and savings could be made to free-up cash to reinvest into the service.

These include cutting the amount of time patients stay in hospital, minimising the level of emergency admissions and better management to reduce staff sickness and turnover – enabling hospitals to compare their performance to others on a variety of measures.

Sandwell and West Birmingham, the Dudley Group and Mid Staffordshire General hospitals NHS trusts are pulled-up for wasting millions of pounds for failing to admit and discharge patients effectively.

Reducing unnecessary admissions and making sure patients left hospital as soon as they were fit would free up more beds and save them each a whopping £10.4m, £6.4m and £3.7m each.

Carrying out elective procedures as day cases where clinical circumstances allow could produce further savings of £181,000 and £155,000 for both Sandwell and West Birmingham and the Dudley Group trusts, cutting costs by £174,000 for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

Valuable hospital bed space is wasted and costs increased by admitting patients to hospital a day before a booked procedure too. The main culprit trusts include Worcestershire Acute, the Dudley Group, Walsall, Sandwell and West Birmingham and Birmingham Children’s Hospital, which waste a combined total of £17.5 million.

Walsall Teaching PCT and Wolverhampton City PCT, could save £3.9 m and £3.1m on average a year on avoidable A&E admissions.