Emergency plans to ensure hospitals can cope with winter strain

Health bosses have begun planning for the busy winter period amid concerns about how Sandwell and City hospitals will cope with the strain.

A&E departments at both hospitals, which are run by the Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, will continue running longer than originally planned due to delays on building the £475 million Midland Metropolitan Hospital.

It had been hoped the Midland Met would be up and running by now but the collapse of contractor Carillion means the new hospital will not be open until at least 2022.

Changes are now planned to ensure both departments have enough staff and try and avoid increasing waiting times.

In a report to board members, trust chief executive Toby Lewis said: "The CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) has begun to consider proposals from the trust for an emergency reconfiguration of a small number of services linked to our winter plan.

"These proposals also help to address our acute medicine staffing model as we both move towards Midland Met.

"The Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee of Sandwell and Birmingham councils has received on outline briefing on these plans which will help us to sustain both A&E departments through to the opening of Midland Met."

Mr Lewis told the Express & Star changes could include shifting a ward from Sandwell to City Hospital

He said: “The trust is preparing for winter, and continues to discuss with the CCG and local authority councillors our resilience. We would expect to move a ward currently based at Sandwell to City, in precisely the way that we will when Midland Met opens in 2022.”

Mr Lewis also revealed A&E staffing would be beefed up to try and cut waiting times, which have been a huge issue at Sandwell Hospital over the last few years.

The number of patients being seen within four hours has largely remained static around the 80 per mark over recent months, way below the national 95 per cent target, which it last hit in August 2015.

Mr Lewis said the four-hour target was the trust's "Achilles heel" and that, following a review by NHS Midlands, "more clinical expertise" will be brought in to "support our frontline teams" to support the "management of clinical risk and flow".