Four-hour waits for Walsall Manor A&E patients

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust was recently fined more than £360,000 by Walsall Clinical Commissioning Group for failing to reach the national of seeing 95 per cent of people within four hours from April to October.

But new figures released by NHS England have revealed that the Trust dipped as low as 83.3 per cent during the space of one week last month and the highest weekly figure for November reached just 90.8 per cent.

It comes after health chiefs at Walsall Council held talks with hospital bosses in a bid to try to drive down admissions.

Chiefs at the hospital have been told to reduce emergency admissions by 3.2 per cent as part of £24m funding plans.

In the week when just 83.3 per cent of patients were seen within four hours in A&E, there were 2,367 attendances.

Figures show that more than 9,400 people visited A&E at the hospital in Pleck Road during November.

The Manor has been faced with more patients as a result of the night time closure of Stafford Hospital's A&E and has been failing to meet the target throughout this year.

Steps are being taken to address the problem, with up 100 extra nurses being recruited and long-term multi-million pounds plans to revamp the department.

Ian Baines, director of finance and performance at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, said: "We have had an extremely busy year with an increased number of people attending Manor Hospital, including patients from Staffordshire who are now coming to Walsall for treatment.

"Unfortunately, this does impact on our capacity and this means some patients are not seen as quickly as they should.

"We are disappointed that in November we were unable to meet the target of 95 per cent of patients attending our emergency department being seen within four hours.

"We continue to work hard with our partner services including West Midlands Ambulance Service, the Walsall Clinical Commissioning Group and social care services to make sure that patients get the right care, in the right place and at the right time."

Bosses have also urged people to consider whether they can avoid going to A&E by visiting their GP or a walk-in health centre.

A winter plan has also been drawn up in a bid to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and cope with any rise in demand.

The plans include offering 40 additional beds in the community to provide a step-down facility for patients who are well enough to leave hospital but not quite well enough to go home and a new £4.7million 30-bed ward which will open at the hospital in January for acutely ill patients.