Hospitals need to be closed to save NHS, doctors warn Mr Farrar, who is rumoured to be a possible successor to Sir David Nicholson as chief executive of NHS England, warned the NHS would become unsustainable if no action is taken. He said he couldn't say how many hospitals would have to close but he referred to a report by the Royal College of Nursing which said up to 6,000 beds could be lost. This equates to around 20 hospitals. Mr Farrar added: "Communities do feel strongly about their hospitals.But they also feel a strong bond with their GP surgeries, and people love district nurses. What I am not saying is that care will disappear from the community. The report comes amid warnings that more than 300,000 patients were waiting more than four hours to be treated at A&E in the first three months of the year. Previously Dr Michael Dixon, who represents many of the clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) who now control £65 billion of health spending, said "an awful lot of fat" needed to be cut from the NHS budget and that healthcare needs to be made more patient-friendly. He suggested that one measure might involve moving frail, elderly patients - who occupy about 70 per cent of hospital beds - to their homes to be looked after by teams of community-health professionals. He said he thought about 50% of what hospitals currently do could be done elsewhere, and the implications of this would be hospitals downsizing to become places people go if they were very ill or needed very specialist care.