Shropshire A&E patients to face medics on the door

It is the latest measure that has been suggested in a bid to tackle waiting times at the county’s two acute hospitals.

Patients will be assessed as they enter A&E to ensure whether they need the service or should be sent to be treated elsewhere. The service will start in September.

The proposals have come out of recent talks about improving the situation at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital.

In March, it was revealed that on two days, the county’s A&E departments had been among the worst in the country.

Government targets say 95 per cent of patients should be seen within four hours but in Shropshire it is around 75 per cent.

Telford & Wrekin NHS boss David Evans said: “A&E performance is still struggling. We’ve seen some improvements but have been unable to sustain them.

"We had a meeting with NHS England and NHS Improvement where we further agreed a range of measures. One of those is to have a primary care professional essentially ‘at the front door’ of our A&Es.

"We hope to have that in place by September. There are implications about how we do that and partners are looking at how we work around that and we will report back to the board in due course.”

Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust says the new service would be paid out of its £1 million winter fund. The investment was announced in March by the Department of Health, which will see £55.98 million of a total £100 million A&E capital funding to ease pressure on emergency departments in time for winter to prevent the departments reaching crisis point.

Hospitals chief executive Simon Wright said: “The NHS nationally has experienced incredible demand over the last winter and as a result the urgent and emergency care system has been under pressure.

“As part of our efforts across the local health economy to improve this area for our patients, we held a very constructive meeting with representatives from the Shropshire A&E Delivery Group, along with representatives from NHS England and NHS Improvement.

“The meeting was called to discuss the reasons for the downturn in performance in the Urgent Care system locally and to agree actions to be taken to improve performance.

“In order to maintain and improve performance, a number of measures were agreed which will be delivered through the Shropshire A&E delivery group, which meets monthly.

“We need to invest more of our focus on reducing ill health and the resulting hospital admissions that are then needed.”