York Hospital to take ‘extraordinary action’ as it doesn’t have enough beds to cope with demand

York Hospital bosses are to take ‘extraordinary action’ to try to relieve the sustained pressure that has pushed the service to breaking point.

The York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust issued a statement this evening saying its acute hospitals, in York and Scarborough have endured one of the busiest days in their history today (Tuesday).

And that has seen the trust moving onto an Opel 4 level alert – the highest it can go without declaring a critical incident.

Opel 4 means the trust is ‘unable to deliver comprehensive care’ and safety is at risk of being compromised.

Essentially, managers can’t discharge enough patients to free up the beds that are needed.

In its statement, the trust said tonight:

“We have been under sustained pressure for several weeks which has escalated over the double bank holiday period, resulting in today (03 January 2023) being one of the busiest our two acute hospitals have ever seen.

“We have high numbers of patients in our emergency departments awaiting admission, and we are simply not discharging patients in high enough numbers to create the capacity we need.

“This means, in operational terms, we are at an escalation of Opel 4, with additional actions and enhanced mitigations in place.

“We are taking a series of actions and reviewing planned activity this week to identify where we can redirect staff and/or create additional acute capacity.

“We are fully aware that taking such action may be disruptive to patients attending hospital for planned care or outpatient appointments and we haven’t made this decision lightly. However, the situation in terms of the pressure on our two emergency departments requires extraordinary action.”

It comes hours after YorkMix reported the shock of a visitor to the York Hospital emergency department who was told more than 40 people were waiting to be admitted – but the hospital was full.