Consultants costing £160,000 have been drafted in to try to speed up Dudley’s troubled accident and emergency unit, it has been revealed.

They will be helping bosses to improve patient assessment times and free up beds so people move through the department and hospital wards more quickly. The hospital has been put on red alert by independent regulator Monitor after repeatedly missing targets and warned it could face ‘formal intervention’ if improvements are not made in the new year.

Chief executive Paula Clark said: “During October we appointed ATOS, a consultancy organisation, to work within the emergency department to improve our patient flow through the actual department.

“This team is going to undertake some further work across the Trust to look at improving patient flow through the whole hospital as we recognise the four hour target is not just an A&E target.”

It is expected 98 per cent of A&E patients should be seen within four hours but 97.96 per cent were seen in that time in September.

Targets were missed between October 2008 and March 2009 and between July and September 2009.

The Trust admits it does not expect to meet the required goals for the final three months of the year.

Monitor has now written to Alf Edwards, chairman of Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, about its concerns and asked for monthly updates and meetings with bosses.

Mrs Clark said: “We take Monitor’s concerns very seriously and welcome its decision not to exercise formal powers to intervene at this stage while we continue to make progress.”