Salisbury District Hospital coping 'reasonably well' with winter pressures
But their CEO admits there have been 'challenging days'
Salisbury District Hospital's boss says they are coping better than many other NHS trusts this winter - but that doesn't mean they're not feeling the pressure.
CEO Stacey Hunter says beds are often full and it's impacting on ambulances handover waiting times some days.
But says the issue is not just with the NHS:
"We are still supporting quite big numbers of people who are ready to be discharged from a hospital, but have not yet been able to access the care they need outside of hospital. The reality is there's a shortage of people who want to work in the care sector."
Her comments come as national figures released today (Friday 6th January) show that almost half of ambulance crews in England were delayed by half an hour or more - as they dropped off patients at A&E departments in the week to New Year's Day.
That's the highest proportion on record according to NHS stats, with over a quarter held up for more than an hour.
Salisbury District Hospital CEO Stacey Hunter says it's been a big issue:
"Ambulance services are experiencing real challenges with them being able to offload patients, as they describe it, into the Accident and Emergency departments. That's true in Salisbury too, we've had some very challenging days where ambulances have had to wait longer than the standard 15 minutes."
The Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust has been asking people to avoid their A&E service unless for a life-threatening or serious injury.
But CEO Stacey Hunter says the service is still coping compared to other Trusts:
"(We're) still managing, relative to others, to deal with ambulance handover waiting times reasonably well. We have definitely seen a deteroration, but relative to other parts of the South West of England, our teams are working really well with ambulance services and managing that as optimally as possible."