Great Western Hospital forced to postpone some routine operations as pressures mount

On the day (January 6) official figures showed that in the week before Christmas hospitals’ accident and emergency departments in England recorded their worst ever performance on waiting times, Great Western Hospital had to postpone some routine operations so they could continue to treat all their admitted patients safely.

GWH is working with its partners in the local healthcare system, including Swindon and Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and South West Ambulance Service, to manage the current high demand for its services.

Over last weekend 667 patients attended the emergency department and 245 of these needed to be admitted into hospital for further care.   “This,” a spokesman said, “is much higher than a typical weekend over the past few months.”

The hospital, along with others up and down the country, has been extremely busy for the past year and demand continues to grow, with staff now caring for around 1,300 more unplanned patients a month than in 2011.

Over the last few months attendances at GWH’s emergency department in particular have increased significantly with an extra 762 more patients attending last month, than in December 2013.

The latest figures show that at GWH over the week 83.4 per cent of patients were treated within four hours instead of 95 per cent – just one of the 127 major A&E hospitals to miss the government target.  This meant that 250 people waited more than four hours in A&E for treatment – against the average across England of 268 people.

The decision to postpone routine operations “was not taken lightly, however we have to prioritise patients needing urgent care such as cancer surgery, emergency surgery and trauma patients, due to the high demand for our services.”

“Any patient whose operation has been postponed will be given another date at the earliest opportunity usually within the next few weeks. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

The GWH website added “A big thank-you to our dedicated staff who continue to work incredibly hard through what is a very challenging time.”