A&E future at Stafford Hospital is on table

Bosses at Stafford Hospital will today decide whether or not they are ready to reopen the A&E department overnight.

If they agree criteria has been met for a 24/7 operation a final decision will be made at a meeting on Tuesday.

Currently, the emergency department is pencilled in to reopen around the clock in October. There has been a number of delays in the run-up to this date.

The department, which has been shut between 10pm and 8am since December 1 last year, had been due to restore full-time services in March and then June, but the move was put back at the last minute.

Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust chief executive Lynn Hill-Tout had said she could not guarantee safety of patients overnight because of staff shortages.

But five senior and seven mid-grade doctors are now expected to be in place by October. The board today is being asked to agree that all the reopening criteria has been or will be met by the deadline.

It will be the NHS commissioners who have the final say at Tuesday's meeting. The board will decide if the number of A&E doctors in place make the department vulnerable when they are absent.