Health chiefs' warning as Calderdale Royal Hospital and NHS face winter pressures challenge

With attendances at its A&E departments up by between 20 and 30 per cent, hospital beds at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust’s Calderdale Royal in Halifax are 97 per cent occupied, councillors were told.

At a health scrutiny board meeting, on receiving the data Coun Mike Barnes said “there’s no slack” and asked: “At what levels does it become unsustainable?”

The trust’s director of operations, Michael Folan, said it had to open up all the physical space it had at the hospital and occupancy levels usually ran at lower levels.

A&E department attendances were up by 20-30 per cent and this can lend itself to higher admissions.

“It is challenging, it is fair to say,” he said.

In 30 years working for the NHS, he said: “I have never known it as challenging as it is at the moment.”

Neil Smurthwaite, Calderdale Cares place lead for performance, said the pattern was similar or worse elsewhere in West Yorkshire – Leeds, for example, was running at 103 per cent occupancy.

Coun Barnes said the need to discharge patients was in turn putting pressures on GPs and other services.

Mr Smurthwaite said this led to the situation being “not far off” unsustainable.

The hospital was running a regular discharge list of around 100 patients – pre-pandemic, a list of 40 had once seen health chiefs summoned to London to explain the situation.

With a bed base of 600 available at the hospital and 100 occupied by people awaiting discharge, it clogged up the system, he said.

There are a number of hospitals in West Yorkshire and nationally in this position, said Mr Smurthwaite.

“It’s not sustainable any more, unless something fundamentally happens,” he said.

Coun Barnes (Lab, Skircoat) stressed he was not criticising anybody, but the pressures were there and councillors had to probe the issue.

Calderdale Council’s Adults, Health and Social Care Scrutiny Board was debating winter pressures and heard from a range of health partners.

Hearing about winter plans, among other pressures they were told Covid, respiratory conditions, seasonal flu and Strep A were all impacting services.