800 patients left waiting for up to 12 hours at West Midlands A&Es

It comes as bosses say hospitals are reaching breaking point due to an influx of admissions.

A total of 779 faced a wait of between four and 12 hours when they visited A&Es in the Black Country, Staffordshire, Birmingham and Worcestershire in the week ending January 11.

The so-called 'trolley waits' shed light on how long it is taking to deal with patients once they have been seen by a doctor. The period until the patient is first seen is usually quoted by health bosses.

Health chiefs have stressed that not all patients were left waiting on trolleys, as some were able to move around.

The worst in the Black Country was Wolverhampton with 218 patients waiting up to 12 hours, while in Walsall there were 180 trolley waits.

The University Hospital of North Midlands NHS Trust, which covers Staffordshire, had 64, with 67 in Dudley at Russells Hall Hospital, and 12 at the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, which includes Sandwell Hospital and City Hospital in Winson Green.

There were also 15 at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth, and 223 in Worcestershire.

Both Walsall Manor and The Royal Stoke University Hospital, which takes patients who would normally have gone to the County Hospital in Stafford where the A&E department is closed overnight, declared a major incident earlier this month as attendances rocketed.

UHNM chief executive Mark Hackett said: "We are one of almost 120 trusts across the country to have missed the four-hour waiting target for patients attending A&E over the last three months.

"Like many other trusts we are currently experiencing significantly increased demand on our services.

"We are putting in place additional measures to ensure people are seen as soon as possible and to reduce the longest waiting times.

"We are working closely with our community partners to manage demand, we are opening an additional 138 beds in the six months between October of last year and March of this year and we are encouraging people locally to use the 111 service, their local GP or their local pharmacy wherever possible."

Richard Kirby, chief executive of Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, added: "We continue to face significant pressure from the volume of emergency admissions – up by 29 per cent in two years - and from our being unable to move patients through the system quickly enough and free-up beds for new patients needing to be admitted to hospital. As a consequence, some patients are waiting longer in A&E than we would like before they can be admitted to a ward."

Dudley's health chief Paula Clark said patients can only be moved when a bed becomes available.

Ms Clark, chief executive of the Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, added 93.8 per cent of patients at Russells Hall Hospital had been seen within the four-hour target during the same week, against a national average of 84.3 per cent.

She said: "We have taken a number of measures to help us discharge medically fit patients as soon as appropriate to free up beds and improve patient flow through the hospital.

"We start planning for discharge as early as possible, have a team of site co-ordinators who co-ordinate patient flow 24 hours a day and have a dedicated discharge lounge where patients can wait comfortably to be discharged. We have also recently purchased 20 beds in three nursing homes in Dudley for patients who need therapy or rehabilitation."