A hospital trust in Greater Manchester has warned patients their accident and emergency departments are 'very busy' - with people being told to expect long waiting times.
The Northern Care Alliance (NCA), which runs Salford Royal, The Royal Oldham, Fairfield General, and Rochdale Infirmary have issued a statement on social media telling patients to expect longer wait times than "they would want."
This is primarily said to be due to 'workforce pressures' as a result of coronavirus and 'patient flow challenges' where patients deemed medically fit for discharge are still in hospital beds.
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It comes as new figures revealed that a record number of patients were forced to wait more than 12 hours for a bed at two hospitals in Greater Manchester last month. And one-third of patients at each of the region's A&E's waited more than four hours.
Greater Manchester's A&E struggles are reflected across the country, as England as a whole marks record waits and the largest ever number of people waiting for treatment. The head of the British Medical Association has warned "these latest NHS performance statistics highlight the enormous pressure that the health service is still having to endure".
During March, the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust confirmed 59.5 per cent of patients waited less than four hours, leaving 40.5 per cent waiting more than four hours. Of the 8,310 patients admitted, 452 people waited more than 12 hours for a ward bed.
And despite the number of new covid infections falling across Greater Manchester (in the week ending April 18), hospital trusts are still struggling to cope with staff sickness and high admissions.
In a thread on Twitter, the NCA said: "Our emergency depts (sic) remain very busy with patients experiencing waits that are longer than we would want. This is mainly as a result of workforce pressures (Omicron) and patient flow challenges where medically fit patients ready for discharge are still in hospital beds."
They added that in March their 'Type 1' A&E was 51.4 per cent within the national four hour standard waiting times, which was worse than in February.
"Our triple strategy remains priority for improvement; continuing with same day emergency care (SDEC) and virtual wards. New work on frailty has started to support to reduce admissions and improve discharge," they said.
"Trust held safety summit on 29 March attended by clinical and operational leaders chaired by Dr Chris Brookes, Chief Medical Officer. Actions agreed to focus on Improvements and reduce safety and harm impacts of patients (long) waiting in our A&Es across our Care Orgs (sic).
"We continue to work with our local healthcare system partners to reduce reliance and unnecessary public attendance to our emergency departments but also to reduce admissions and improve hospital discharge for those medically fit to help free up our hospitals beds."
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