Demand on Birmingham hospitals already surging due to winter illnesses

Hospitals in Birmingham are already seeing a surge in extra patients as the NHS battles to cope with the pressure of winter demand. Board members of the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust were told the number of people with flu being presented at emergency departments is higher than this time last year.

Bosses said they are now working with other organisations across the city to try to ease the pressure on hospitals. Earlier this month, NHS Birmingham and Solihull launched its Breathe Easy campaign urging people to get vaccinated against respiratory diseases such as Covid, flu and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) to ease the pressure on GPs and hospitals during the winter.

But data showed that, as of last week, uptake for Covid, flu and RSV vaccination uptake amongst the eligible population was only in the 30-35 per cent mark for each condition. At Thursday's (November 28) meeting, Iain Pickles, Chief Operating Officer, said pressure has been increasing since October, particularly over the last 10 days.

READ MORE: Birmingham warned 'Covid hasn't gone away' as they are urged to get protected - here's how

He said: "We know the management of influenza creates a number of significant flow challenges in hospitals. Given we've seen that pressure increasing over the last six weeks or so, a number of additional winter resilience actions were agreed across the system as a whole with a focus on a small number of key high impact areas.

"The plans to reduce the flow of patients into hospital are absolutely critical. We're seeing an increase in attendances to our emergency departments this year. In November, to date, we've seen an eight percent increase compared to November last year so ensuring we have reduced the number of patients who present to hospitals in the first place is absolutely critical.

"There are a number of schemes we are working with partners across the system on in order to ensure that. First of all, a real focus on maximising the use of urgent community response.

"Broadly, that is characterised by community services working with the ambulance service to identify patients who have called 999 or 111 who need a healthcare response but don't necessarily need to come to hospital. We can get community service provision to those patients in their own home or after an ambulance has been to see those patients.

"Secondly, we're really trying to maximise the usage of virtual wards across the system. There are a number of different virtual wards in (Birmingham and Solihull), some run by University Hospitals Birmingham and also some run by Birmingham Community Healthcare Trust.

"It's absolutely vital we use those as effectively as possible, particularly the respiratory virtual wards given we know winter illnesses is the cause of respiratory illness. Thirdly, there is an increased focus on 'call before convey'. That is again support to the ambulance service providing additional clinical input for patients they might otherwise convey to hospital.

"Finally, we are working with colleagues at Birmingham Community Healthcare Trust to create a respiratory SDEC (same day emergency care) at the Washwood Heath facility. If we can divert some of the lower acuity respiratory infection away from Heartlands that will have a significant impact on flow through the department as a whole."