Plans in place to make Teesside hospitals 'winter ready'
South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust say they're facing pressure
Plans are being put into place to make sure hospitals across Teesside are 'winter ready'.
South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust say its staff are facing a lot of pressure, not only during this season but all-year round.
Amy Oxley, deputy director of nursing at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: "We're already seeing our hospital very busy. We are improving our community nursing services so that we can care for patients at home. We're working with GP practices and pharmacies in the community to support patients to seek help from those services in the first instance where possible.
"We advocate our patients to use 111 which will direct them to the right service for their care needs. We're already seeing our newly opened this year's Urgent Treatment Centre being really well used, which has redirected some patients that historically would have come to our Accident and Emergency department.
"We're still seeing a big demand on our A&E department and we would encourage people to access as much services as they can before presenting at A&E unless of course it is an emergency, which is exactly why we're there.
"We know from our previous years that we're always going to need some extra beds because of the increased demand, so we're stepping up around a ward-full of extra beds for winter through January, February and March to care for those extra number of patients that do need hospital care.
"We're opening our same-day emergency care area overnight over winter to make sure that we can maximise the use of that service and we're also working really closely with social care, to make sure that we can get patients at home with social care support who don't need to receive hospital care."
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