A HAMPSHIRE hospital has been forced to postpone almost all non emergency operations as it battles a crisis in its accident and emergency unit, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Bosses say they have taken the extreme measures in order to deal with the huge surge in numbers of people presenting unwell at A&E.

It comes after an 82-year-old woman was left waiting on a hospital trolley for 12 hours after suffering a heart attack.

Her family told how paramedics had to stay with her for several hours before she “endured the indignity” of being examined in a corridor by medical staff.

Hospital chiefs at Winchester's Royal Hampshire County Hospital today said they had been struggling to cope since the start of this year but were not able to provide details of the numbers of people being affected and what operations or how many had been postponed.

But it is understood that patients scheduled to have anything other than cancer-related operations are being told they cannot take place as the hospital struggles with crippling winter pressures.

Managers at the Romsey Road site are hoping the temporary measures will free up capacity to deal with the high numbers of people seeking emergency medical help.

In a statement explaining the postponement of operations, such as for knees and hips, the trust deputy chief executive Donna Green said: “Unfortunately we have had to take some difficult decisions and we have had to postpone planned operations except cancer surgery and emergency surgery, which will continue.

“We apologise for the inconvenience to patients and operations will be rescheduled as soon as possible.”

The apology comes after the Daily Echo was contacted by the family of an 82-year-old woman from Winchester who had suffered a heart attack and was forced to wait on a trolley in a hospital corridor for 12 hours.

The pensioner's family say she then suffered the indignity of being medically examined in a semi-public place and had to lift her top for the examination.

Daily Echo:

Her daughter, who asked not to be named, said: “My mother, who had suffered a heart attack, was kept in a corridor and examined including having her top lifted when there were other people, so there was no privacy or dignity.

“The ambulance staff had to stay with her for a couple of hours before she was handed over.

“She was in a lot of pain but was kept in a corridor through the night under full lights and it's noisy. It is not helpful for her health.

“The A&E staff are great, the ambulance crew was great but there is something wrong with the set-up.

“The organisation is just appalling. I found the whole situation mad and not really acceptable.”

Rick Smith, chief executive of Hampshire Age Concern, said: “Any sort of instance like this is one too many. It is unacceptable.

“It would be interesting to see what steps Winchester hospital is taking to deal with this. Whether they expect it to continue or whether it is a one-off.”

As previously reported, staff members have raised the issue of how waiting times are being recorded. A whistleblower has told the Daily Echo that patients arriving by ambulance were not being booked in on arrival. It means the clock does not start ticking on the four-hour treatment target.

A former member of staff said: “The practice of queuing patients is nothing new. The department books patients in to the department on a part of the computer screen called 'ambulance queue'. “This then counts on the stats as a handover absolving the ambulance service of responsibility but means the hospital then queues the patients in the corridor.

“This means the hospital does not get fined for not accepting a handover from ambulance crews, and they do not get fined for breaching four hours.”

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The national target is that 95 per cent of patients must be dealt with within four hours. So far this year it has dropped to 83.1 per cent at Winchester.

In a statement, the trust said: “We are exceptionally busy at the moment with unprecedented numbers of emergency patients and we thank our patients for their understanding.

“Patients arriving by ambulance are booked in as soon as they are handed over from the ambulance crew. Patients are seen in order of clinical priority. We apologise to patients who have experienced a longer than expected wait.

“As you'll appreciate we can't comment on individual cases but we are very happy to talk to the family (of the 82-year-old) directly if they wish to contact us.

“We take our patients privacy and dignity very seriously. If a patient has any concerns we encourage them to raise it with staff at the time or contact our customer care team who will investigate.”

Hampshire county councillor Frank Rust, a member of its Health and Adult Social Care select committee, said of the incident with the 82-year-old: “That is a matter of simple dignity and should apply in any hospital whether it is overcrowded or not. It should never happen.”