Shropshire's A&E departments face busiest days for more than three years

Nigel Lee, chief operating officer, said urgent care demand at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust has 'risen to pre-Covid levels and beyond'.

He told a recent meeting of the trust's board of directors that peaks in activity were 'broadening'.

NHS England figures show 13,618 patients visited the A&E departments at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital in Telford in June, up from 13,376 in May.

In June 2020 the A&Es coped with 8,346 attendances, while in June 2019 – before the outbreak of the pandemic – there were 12,227 visitors.

Mr Lee said: "In May the performance was slightly better than our equivalent in May of 19/20 which is our most recent appropriate comparison.

"It was really pleasing to have only had one 12-hour breach on a particularly difficult day.

"Towards the end of May and certainly into June we have seen significantly high levels of urgent care activity, and at the end of May and into the beginning of June we've seen four out of our top five highest ever attendances in the last three or four years.

"This is causing extraordinary pressures at the front door, especially with ambulance handover delays and other pressures.

"The volume of activity is continuing to rise and that is significant."

He said work was taking place surrounding the impact of NHS 111 and with the ambulance service, while Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin Integrated Care System is also leading a major programme on admission avoidance.

Mr Lee said: "The patterns of activity are still reasonably similar.

"I think the volumes, as they continue to rise, then those patterns where we had often seen real peaks in activity in the middle of the afternoon and then through the evening, that is still the case but it is broadening.

"We are certainly seeing activity remain later on into the evening.

"The higher levels of activity that we have seen during the weekdays for example, have been well into the evening.

"At weekends where we've had a couple of extraordinarily high volumes of activity, particularly on a Sunday, that has started actually from lunchtime.

"So the peaks and the patterns are still similar but they are broadening."

He said the number of Covid patients being cared for in the trust's hospitals has grown slightly.

Mr Lee added: "We are varying, we were operating at very low numbers – one, two, three patients.

"We are hovering at around between five and 10 at the moment. We have a couple of patients in critical care at the minute."

It comes as there has been a surge in new coronavirus cases across the county, with health chiefs urging people to get vaccinated if they haven't yet had their Covid jab.