Shropshire hospital boss in A&E winter warning
A winter action plan must be drawn up to avoid a repeat of last year's A&E crisis, the county's new hospital chief has said.
Simon Wright urged health and council leaders to come to a "common place" to "map a winter plan" as a matter of urgency. He was speaking on his first day as the new chief executive of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.
It comes after pressure on A&E departments led to a dramatic increase in the number of cancelled operations at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford's Princess Royal Hospital last winter.
Health chiefs said at the time that 'bed blocking' was having a major knock-on effect and needed to be tackled as a matter of urgency.
Mr Wright was speaking to members of the joint health overview and scrutiny committee at Castle Farm Community Centre in Telford yesterday. The group is made up of councillors from both local authorities and health representatives.
Mr Wright said: "We need to see the problem from the same perspective to map our winter plan. We need to try and arrive at a common place in a month."
He added that they needed to act "in pace" to have plans in place before the colder months hit.
Only 86 per cent of A&E patients received treatment within four hours at Shropshire's main hospitals between October and December last year. The Government's target is 95 per cent. It was also revealed that a total of 561 operations were cancelled from October to January. In the same period the year before, 158 operations were cancelled due to a lack of available beds.
Councillor Andy Burford, for Telford & Wrekin Council, said at yesterday's meeting that recent figures for delayed transfer of care – where patients are ready to return home or transfer to another form of care but still occupy a bed – remained "worryingly high". But he praised new measures that have been put in place since last winter to help alleviate the pressure this year.
