Hospital bosses warn sites across Lincolnshire are filling up before winter pressures have even begun
The trust in charge says it's having trouble discharging patients
Hospital bosses are warning sites across Lincolnshire are filling up.
With winter pressures looming, combined with Covid cases, Lincoln, Boston, Grantham and Louth are all feeling the impact.
Andrew Morgan, chief exec at ULHT, said despite A&E numbers being the same as usual, they're feeling extra pressure.
"What we are facing is sicker people, what you normally need to do with sicker people is admit them, the issue we are facing is that we are having trouble, many days, discharging people from hospital who no longer need to be in hospital.
"If we were able to do better on some of the discharges that would make it easier to cope because flow is the thing that you need in a hospital, otherwise it just becomes full, and when it’s full you can’t admit more people and that’s why it all backs up at the front door.
"This causes a logjam at the front door because we’re unable to admit new patients if there are other patients in those beds.
"What that then results in is really busy A&E departments, people waiting to be seen, people waiting for beds, overcrowding, ambulances queuing to handover patients.
"Efforts at the moment with our colleagues in the community, and internal, is to focus on getting that flow right so that we can plan for what we anticipate will be a really, really busy winter. "