The Nottingham and Nottinghamshire healthcare system has declared a 'critical incident' due to increasing pressures on hospitals. NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire made the announcement on Monday (December 19) evening, just hours after Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) declared an internal critical incident.
Officials said they were continuing to see a high demand for all services across the Nottinghamshire system. "Our aim is to prioritise patients with the highest level of need and ensure that we continue to be able to manage emergency care," it said in a statement.
"This means that some operations and outpatient appointments may be postponed to prioritise patients with the most urgent clinical need. We regret that it has been necessary to take this step, but it is important that we focus on patients needing urgent and emergency care as a priority. If you are not contacted directly about an operation being postponed, please continue to attend your appointment as usual."
Read more: 'Critical incident' declared at Nottingham hospitals and operations cancelled
NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire advised the public to only call 999 or attend A&E departments for serious accidents and for genuine emergencies. Earlier on Monday (December 19), NUH said some operations had been cancelled amid mounting pressures on the health service and its emergency department in particular.
Medical director Keith Girling told Nottinghamshire Live: "We've currently got in excess of [ambulance] 20 crews downstairs waiting to handover their patients. We've had very significant numbers through the department. It's gridlocked.
"We've got beds filled across the organisation, so we've got to get discharges out so we can get those patients in in order to get some flow back." He added: "We've sadly had to cancel and defer some patients' operations because of the amount of pressure on our beds. So beds that we had expected to use for planned surgery we've had to use for the emergency patients that have come in over the weekend."
Mr Girling said the pressures were present across the whole county, and the UK as a whole. But he explained that NUH had seen a 'huge' increase in flu patients after the recent cold snap, which saw temperatures drop to -7.8C in part of the county last week.
"We've seen a very significant increase in flu numbers and in elderly with respiratory diseases. A smattering of Covid but the flu is the biggest problem we've got.
"We've seen a huge increase in demands for respiratory beds in the last 72 hours. We've also seen a significant increase in trauma and patients falling and fracturing various limbs. So the cold snap has certainly had a very big impact." It means it's the third system-wide critical incident in only a few months.
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