10,000 more visit A&E at Telford's Princess Royal Hospital
More than 59,000 patients visited Telford's A&E in a year – 10,606 more than were seen at Shrewsbury's emergency department.
New figures, which cover the period from November 2017 to last October, show about 48,700 patients attended Royal Shrewsbury Hospital's A&E.
More than 13,000 patients also visited the urgent care centre at RSH, compared to around 8,800 at Princess Royal Hospital.
Health bosses have approved plans which will see a single emergency centre for the county sited at RSH, with both hospitals running 24/7 urgent care centres.
They say up to 65 per cent of patients who currently attend A&E could be treated at the urgent care centres in the future.
Current arrangements are only open 12 hours a day and do not treat minor injuries.
South Shropshire Green Party, which obtained the figures from Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, says the number of patients attending the urgent care services currently make up a small number of the total.
Officials have disagreed with the Future Fit plans, saying the county needs both its A&Es, but claim the current urgent care arrangements need immediate improvement in order to take pressure off the A&Es.
South Shropshire Green Party co-ordinator Hilary Wendt said: "We know that Shropshire's A&Es fail month after month to meet the national standard to treat, transfer or discharge 95 per cent of all A&E patients within four hours – to the serious detriment of patients' well-being.
"This is appalling. The trust's own prediction shows no improvement and we need to know why.
"Patients triaged as needing urgent care should not have to wait for the Future Fit plan to materialise.
"We need to know why the Clinical Commissioning Groups are not providing for urgent care clinical staffing and facilities now and leave the A&E clinicians to treat the more serious emergency patients much sooner than appears now."
Dr Julie Davies, Shropshire CCG's director of performance and delivery, said the current urgent care provision cannot be directly compared to the new Future Fit model as they are very different.
She said: "The urgent care centres described in Future Fit, one at RSH and one at PRH, will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and arrangements will be made to treat patients there with illnesses and/or injuries that are not life or limb-threatening but require urgent attention.
"Current arrangements are only open 12 hours a day and do not treat minor injuries.
"Having urgent care centres at each site in the future will allow patients to be safely and quickly seen in the right place by the right doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals.”
However the Future Fit plans face an uncertain future after the Health Secretary has asked an independent panel to decide whether the decision made by health commissioners should be reviewed.
Health chiefs are also developing plans for urgent treatment centres in the county.
