Delays at Greater Manchester’s A&E departments are continuing into the winter as patients warn of ‘17-hour waits to see a doctor’ at one hospital. This week, patients coming through the emergency department are claiming they have been waiting ‘two days’ for a bed on a ward at the Royal Bolton Hospital.
Summer - typically a period of relative calm for the NHS - was marred by extremely high pressure. The North West Ambulance Service rose to its highest level of alert possible, and emergency departments across the region were dangerously full, according to medics on the ground.
Earlier this month, delays affected Manchester Royal Infirmary and Wythenshawe Hospital, where the Manchester Evening News was told of waits of more than 16 hours in A&E. Ironic cheers rang out as people were called in to be seen, patients claimed.
