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Surge in emergency patients at Walsall Manor Hospital

The NHS Trust which runs Walsall Manor Hospital has seen a surge in emergency admissions over the past two years, according to a new report.

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Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust dealt with 35,056 emergency inpatients in 2014/15, compared to 34,036 the year before.

In 2012/13, the Trust dealt with just 25,184 emergency inpatients.

The figures have been published in the Trust's annual report, which said: "Over the past 12 months, Walsall Healthcare has experienced big increases in demand and complexity across the Trust, affecting almost all our services both in hospital and the community but especially our emergency and elective (planned) care.

"We have faced particular pressure from emergency admissions throughout the year which significantly stretched our services and colleagues on a number of occasions.

"During our busiest period in January 2015, we were forced to put a number of emergency arrangements in place to ensure we could care for the patients already in the hospital, discharge patients well enough to go home and reduce the long waits for admission in our emergency department."

It said the arrangements included cancelling some planned surgery, scaling back Trust-provided training and reviewing outpatient clinics to ensure as many clinical staff as possible were at the frontline.

The report added: "The pressures we have faced are in part due to the downgrading of services at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust in 2012/13."

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