ACCIDENT and emergency bosses say they have “got a grip” on the huge pressures still facing their departments.

It was reported in last week’s Advertiser that A&E departments at Worcestershire Royal and Redditch Alexandra hospitals were stepped up to the highest level of escalation as continued cold weather increased emergency admissions and high levels of severely ill patients took their toll.

Stewart Messer, chief operating officer of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, has lifted the lid further on the extent of the situation.

“On a daily basis we would on average have about 160 attendances at Worcester, of which about 60 would be admitted. But over the last few weeks that admittance figure has been more like 75 every day.

“When you have those higher numbers for consecutive days it very quickly stacks up and causes pressures.

“What we are experiencing at the moment is unprecedented and it has got to be a result of the weather.”

The ongoing pressures on Worcestershire’s accident and emergency departments are reflected in the trust’s latest figures.

They show that during February, only 80.5 per cent of accident and emergency patients at Worcester were seen, treated, discharged, admitted or transferred within four hours, with Redditch faring little better at 81.7 per cent.

The national target is 95 per cent.

However Mr Messer said the departments were among the best in the region against targets for handing over patients from ambulance crews to A&E staff, at a time when ambulance service chiefs say they are being put under pressure by the practice of stacking patients in ambulances outside hospitals.