“Business Continuity Incident” was declared at Maelor Hospital on Friday
Health service pressures remain locally, with members of the public who need help urged to contact NHS 111 Wales in the first instance to be advised about the most appropriate service – but still in life threatening circumstances, the hospital’s Emergency Department.
As we reported on Friday afternoon the health board stated ‘the health and social care system across Wales is experiencing significant and sustained pressure’ with ‘significant and sustained pressure across North Wales’.
Around 9PM that evening the public data was reporting 90 patients with a 17 hours queue time (live data below).
Locally we had been told that unprecedented pressure had resulted in “Business Continuity” incident mode being activated, something that has now been confirmed by the health board.
Such an ‘incident’ is something that interrupts routine service delivery and requires a response – usually from a preprepared plan – with special arrangements required to be implemented until services can return to an acceptable level. Sometimes such activations are made public.
Adele Gittoes, Interim Executive Director of Operations for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, said: “We declared a Business Continuity Incident at Wrexham Maelor Hospital on Friday due to prolonged and unprecedented demands on our services and it was stood down on Saturday.
“We continue to see a high volume of patients attending our Emergency Departments and are working closely with colleagues across the health and social care system, Welsh Government and the Welsh Ambulance Service Trust to identify ways to alleviate these pressures and improve the experience of our patients.
“We are urging members of the public who need help to contact NHS 111 Wales in the first instance to be advised about the most appropriate service, which might be self-care at home, a visit to the pharmacy, a GP appointment, a Minor Injuries Unit, or, in life threatening circumstances, the hospital Emergency Department.
“As always, our Emergency Departments will remain open and will see patients in order of clinical priority. However, we regret that those who do attend will face extremely long waits to be seen while staff on duty do all they can to keep patients safe.”
Readers may have seen a new green box on site logging the current public wait data from the local hospital.
The explainer from NHS Wales for the published data states: “The Typical time in department times are indicative based on previous attendance data.”
Crucially it adds, “The information does not include patients arriving by ambulance, or patients with a serious condition that is likely to result in a hospital admission” and “The Currently in Department is a ‘live’ view of the current number of patients in the department”.
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