Shrewsbury and Telford hospitals declare second 'critical incident' in less than a week
A second 'critical incident' at the county's major hospitals in just six days has led to calls for action to help under pressure staff.
Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals NHS Trust (SaTH) – which runs both Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) and Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) in Telford – confirmed the latest 'critical incident' on Wednesday evening.
It came after a day where ambulances were once again seen queuing outside waiting to offload patients – with up to 12 waiting outside PRH at one point, queued up almost to the entrance.
It follows a previous 'critical incident' on Friday last week.
The situation means that some non-urgent services at the hospitals have been stopped, with staff tasked with helping out in areas under severe pressure – particularly A&E.
As evidence of the difficulties, Wednesday saw ambulances waiting a total of 299 hours and 26 minutes outside SaTH hospitals, including 140 hours in Shrewsbury and 158 in Telford. This was the equivalent of taking 25 ambulances off the road.
The longest wait for a patient was 10 hours and 42 minutes, with another four taking over nine hours.
The situation illustrates the ongoing pressure on the county's health service, with capacity stretched by a combination of increased demand, restrictions on space due to Covid requirements, as well as difficulties facing the primary care sector and community social care.
The hospital trust also highlighted that beds were being blocked due to difficulties discharging patients to social care.
Councillor Shaun Davies, the Labour leader of Telford & Wrekin Council, said the situation at SaTH was "not just normal winter pressure" and that staff at the trust are under immense strain.
He has called for extra measures to be considered to help ease the crisis, such as the use of hotels to provide social care spaces, allowing healthy patients to be discharged, creating more free beds in hospitals.
However the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury, Daniel Kawczynski, said Telford & Wrekin Council, and Councillor Davies' opposition to the Future Fit reorganisation of SaTH's hospitals was putting them under increasing pressure.
A spokesman for the hospital trust: "Our hospitals continue to experience intense pressure due to the exceptionally high levels of demand for the services that we provide, as well as the ongoing impacts from Covid-19. There are also ongoing issues with regards to discharging medically fit patients.
"Despite us taking every available option to free up capacity and create additional space, we need to ensure we can continue to prioritise our services and so we have declared a new critical incident. This means that we are pausing a very limited number of non-urgent services to allow us to meet the most urgent needs of those we care for.
"Urgent services, including cancer, and time-critical procedures will continue, and we will contact patients directly who may be affected by delays to non-urgent treatment or postponed appointments."
The situation facing SaTH does appear to have worsened in recent weeks, but the trust had faced significant difficulties before the pandemic – routinely having some of the worst performance on A&E waiting times in the country, as well as for patients waiting on trolleys.
The advent of Covid has, however, had a number of impacts which have exaggerated problems.
There are an increased number of patients needing to be treated for the disease – 64 in beds at the trust as of the most recent update – while the amount of space in the hospitals has also been cut, further limiting the capacity for patients.
Up to £9 million is being spent on modernisation of the A&E at RSH which should allow for more patients to be seen, while a modular ward has also been created at the hospital to increase capacity.
Despite the efforts workers at the trust have described the A&E as in "desperate need of modernisation".
It all comes against the backdrop of the protracted plan to overhaul how the hospitals operate – and potentially modernise facilities – which officials and clinicians have argued would improve the situation.
The 'Future Fit' reorganisation would see RSH becoming the county's sole A&E, while PRH would take on other services such as planned care.
The efforts have been controversial, attracting significant political opposition, as well as concern from residents of Telford worried out the loss of services.
The financial case for the plan is currently being considered by the government – although is understood to now cost more than the £312m which was allocated for the work in 2018.
