As NHS staff scrambled to deal with the Omicron wave of Covid while bringing down huge waiting lists, Newcastle's hospitals were the busiest in the country in January according to NHS data.
The Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust - which manages the the Freeman and the RVI in addition to a number of community sites - admitted 4,183 patients for elective treatments over the month. That was 4% more than anywhere else in England. The next busiest was the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust - which saw 3,966 patients.
In Newcastle, the hospital speciality to see the most patients was ophthalmology - with 832 patients seen. That service has been under extreme pressure since Covid-19 hit, and of those people 362 had been waiting more than a year of their treatment. Other areas to see significant numbers of patients included the Trust's trauma and orthopaedics department (412 patients) and "other surgical services" (523).
