New Cross Hospital's A&E figures still soaring

New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton saw almost 10,000 patients last month, an average daily attendance of 322.

Patient numbers were up two per cent from this time last year, while numbers at the Phoenix walk-in-centre in the city rocketed seven per cent.

However the hospital fell just short of experiencing its busiest ever month, which bosses were predicting halfway through April when numbers were soaring.

Hospitals across the country have been struggling to cope with record A&E figures for the best of two years, with New Cross badly affected.

To combat the issue health chiefs in Wolverhampton have drawn up plans for a new £30m Emergency Centre, which will include a large new A&E unit and is due to open next November.

New figures show in total 9,674 patients visited A&E in April, the record is10,018 which was set last July.

Combining walk-in centre figures, which includes its minor injury units, the trust dealt with 12,998 patients in total last month

Bosses said the continued increase in patient numbers was one of the many reasons for the hospital's impending new Emergency Centre.

Chief operating officer at the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, Gwen Nuttall, said: "April was the second busiest month we have recorded in both the emergency department and the Phoenix walk in centre combined.

"We saw an increase in attendances at New Cross of 2.3 per cent in the last year and seven per cent at the walk in centre.

"The continued increase in attendances is one of the many reasons we are delighted that we have approved the plans for a new Emergency Care and Urgent Care Centre on the New Cross site, which is scheduled to open in November 2015."

New Cross' A&E is currently dealing with 40,000 extra patients per year than it was originally designed to.

Staff have come under increasing pressure, with patients often left in corridors to be treated.

To help cope in the meantime before the new centre opens bosses have splashed out £2.5m on a 10-bed extension of the current A&E.

And a new £500,000 Clinical Decisions Unit, where patients with relatively minor injuries and ailments go to be treated and await test results, was unveiled last year.

But the capacity issues remain and chiefs are patiently waiting for the new unit - which will have an A&E three times the size of the current one - to open.

There are fears that yet more patients will besiege the unit when nearby Cannock Hospital closes its minor injuries unit.

It comes just weeks ahead of Wolverhampton health bosses officially taking over the running of the Cannock site.

The hospital will be taken over by bosses from the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust when the troubled Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust, which currently runs it, is dissolved.