A&E attendance at North East hospitals rose sharply in March as winter-style pressures continue to put strain on the NHS.
In Newcastle, city hospitals boss Dame Jackie Daniel said A&E had seen 7% more people through the door than pre-pandemic levels in March - and that when counting just the most sick patients, this was up 21.7%. Around the country it was the busiest March on record for emergency departments, with more than 2.2 million people turning up in need of help.
And the picture is similar across other hospitals in the region. Across five hospital trusts, 91,360 people attended urgent or emergency care services in March - that's the most since October, and that was the busiest month going back to at least 2017, when the NHS began collecting data in this way.
