James Cook: New ward opens to relieve winter pressures as more operations have to be cancelled

A new winter ward has opened at James Cook University Hospital to help alleviate the winter strain on services.

In recent weeks the hospital, based on Marton Road in Middlesbrough, is one of many nationally who have had to deal with a surge in emergency patients needing to be admitted onto wards for care and treatment.

Elective surgery has also had to be cancelled within 24 hours of the operation to relieve the pressure - six such operations were cancelled in the week up to Tuesday, and 14 the week before.

Other elective operations planned for more than a day ahead have also been postponed.

Now, an experienced team from across the trust has come together to staff a 32-place winter unit which has 18 inpatient beds and a discharge lounge for up to 14 patients, who are fit enough to be discharged, but are waiting for either family to pick them up, prescriptions or an ambulance to take them to a primary care hospital or care home.

This enables other wards and the accident and the emergency department, which saw 600 more patients in December than it did the same time last year, to transfer patients to the winter ward to easing stress on the system.

Winter ward manager Kerri Davies said: “The ward has a wide variety of highly experienced staff from James Cook and primary care hospitals caring for patients with differing needs.

“We are on-call to take patients from the under-pressure areas of the hospital, so the other wards can accommodate incoming appropriate patients - this in turn helps patient flow.”

Mandy Headland, managing director of integrated medical care centre, added: “The ward beds are a key part of our winter plan and enable us to care for the increased number of patients requiring admission to our hospital during winter and will remain open until the end of March.”

A spokesman for the trust said of the cancelled operations: “We appreciate this is distressing for patients and their families – and it is frustrating for staff – but we are trying to keep any disruption to our elective (planned) programme to a minimal.

“We’re working hard to get patients back into hospital for their surgery as soon as beds become available. We have also opened a ‘winter ward’ to help relieve the pressure for beds and improve patient flow.”