Flu bug triggers pressure on Shropshire's A&E departments

The numbers represent an eight per cent increase on a year ago.

Meanwhile, the number of people being admitted as in-patients has increased by 15 per cent over the same period.

Peter Herring, chief executive of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals, said a surge in patients with a flu-like virus was the main factor in the increase in patients turning up to A&E over the past few weeks.

Figures released earlier this week revealed 86 per cent of A&E patients were seen within four hours at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford's Princess Royal Hospital between October and December last year.

The figures are nearly 10 per cent below the government target of 95 per cent of patients being seen within four hours - and well below the national average for that period of 92 per cent.

Mr Herring said the increase in the number of patients visiting A&E told only part of the story, as the patients coming in were far more ill than they had been in previous years.

He said: "It is not simply about the number of people presenting themselves to A&E, but it it also about the seriousness of their condition.

"The bigger problem has come from the number of people requiring admission to a ward."

A total of 508 patients were admitted onto wards from the hospitals' A&E departments from December 22 to 28 last year, compared to 441 people for the corresponding week in 2013 ­- an increase of 15 per cent, or an extra 10 patients a day.

David Evans, chief officer of the Telford and Wrekin Care Commissioning Group, said while there had been no official confirmation of a flu outbreak, there had been a big increase in the number of patients with a flu-like virus.

He said, coupled with an ageing population, it was putting the hospitals under increased stress.

"We would normally expect a cold winter to kill off a lot of the germs, but we haven't had a cold winter for a few years now," he said.

"We have seen a rise, year-on-year, for emergency services."

Dr Caron Morton, chief officer for Shropshire Care Commissioning Group, added: "We had a bit of a run about Christmas time, and what we did notice was that there were a lot of respiratory illnesses.

"It appears to be a viral infection, and a lot of elderly people seem to have felt it, and they seem to have been a lot more ill than they have been in previous years, they have really been quite poorly."

The number of people attending A&E in Shropshire saw a 2,500 increase for the past three months of 2014 compared the same period the previous year.

This meant that the trust failed to meet its government target, despite treating an extra 2,000 people within four hours compared to 2013.