HEREFORD County Hospital is so full it has been operating at levels that could risk patient safety, according to new figures.

A&E is so busy one patient waited one hour and 43 minutes in an ambulance outside, while hundreds of others faced delays.

In the week December 2-8 the hospital was operating at 98.2 per cent bed capacity on general and acute wards – well above the 85 per cent the British Medical Association recommends “to ensure safe patient care”.

It was within a handful of beds of total capacity.

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Hospital bosses say safety is their priority and they do everything they can to mitigate risks to patients.

The NHS say any figure above 92 per cent bed occupancy starts to have a negative impact on A&E performance.

The hospital has 261 beds plus another 31 ‘escalation beds’ – ones it can use in parts of the hospital to handle overspill during busy periods.

But on average in the week the hospital had just five beds available, and on some days fewer.

During winter the NHS publish weekly figures to show how hospitals are coping.

They show that during the week in question 17 ambulances waited more than an hour outside A&E, and 58 waited longer than half an hour.

On average ambulances were taking 67 patients to the hospital every day – about one every 20 minutes.

On the busiest day, Friday, that number jumped to 82. Many of them required beds.

According to the West Midlands Ambulance Service, 267 patients out of 443 were not handed over to the A&E staff within the 15-minute target.

On the busy Friday ambulance calls across the region were 15 per cent up on the same day the previous year.

Hospital bosses say they acknowledge the shortage of beds, which “can put pressure on services and has the potential to affect patient experience”.

But a Wye Valley NHS Trust spokesman stressed: “The safety of patients is our priority.

“We use our escalation bed capacity to reduce bed pressure in our wards and departments to mitigate risks to patients to ensure they are treated as safely and effectively as possible.”

The latest figures for Hereford continue to shine a light on how growing demand is putting the service under intense strain.

And the worry is that we have not yet had the sort of cold weather blast that creates a sudden surge.

To free up beds the NHS encourages staff to reduce lengthy stays in hospital. At Wye Valley Trust on the Sunday 118 patients had been in hospital for seven days or more, about 45 per cent of all bed space. Twenty-four patients had been in hospital for three weeks or longer, occupying 9 per cent of beds.

Ledbury Reporter:

On average ambulances were taking 67 patients to the hospital every day

The knock-on effect

Hold-ups at hospital A&Es are having a knock-on effect on answering 999 calls for the ambulance service.

On the Friday night in question the busy workload meant it took more than two hours and two cancelled ambulances before reaching a patient in Leominster.

The patient had been advised by their doctor to call an ambulance because of concern over a medical condition.

The call was rated as a ‘category 3’ emergency call, which means the ambulance is targeted to reach the patient within two hours at the most, though the service aim to arrive much faster.

But West Midlands Ambulance Service was so busy that night it took two hours and 10 minutes.

Twice ambulances were routed to the call, but twice they had to be redirected for more urgent cases. In the meantime paramedics rang the patient to keep a check on them.

The impact in loss of time in A&E queues can be worked out easily using the rule that ambulances should be able to drop off and be available to answer another call within a maximum 30-minute turnaround time, which includes 15 minutes to hand the patient over to hospital staff.

The service says 23 patients waited over an hour during one week, meaning an absolute minimum of 11.5 hours lost time (23 x 30 minutes).

However, many shorter delays would have added to that total during the week.