Greater Manchester faces 'highest number of A&E patients ever' as crisis talks begin on 'any chance of getting through winter'

The region’s major hospitals are already bracing for winter chaos. Greater Manchester’s NHS could see ‘the highest number of patients in A&E ever’, according to one hospital trust chief.

In the pre-pandemic years, summer typically made way for recovery time for the NHS, with fewer patients needing emergency and urgent care. But for the last two years, medics have sounded alarm bells that summers have provided no respite.

Over the past few months, the system has been mired by a dire combination of ever-increasing demand from a rising number of sick people, short-staffing, and an absence of free beds on wards. Patients waiting 12 hours in emergency departments continues to rise across Greater Manchester - and nationally, NHS bosses have issued warnings that hospitals should be tackling delays which can prevent paramedics from getting back out on the road when they drop patients off at A&Es.

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The NHS in Greater Manchester is concerned about the continued rise of patients waiting 12 hours in emergency departments, heard the Northern Care Alliance (NCA) NHS Foundation Trust board meeting today (July 25). "We are collecting data about harms patients are coming to after 12-hour waits and it’s going in the wrong direction", said the trust's staff.

The increase has ‘not been arrested yet,’ but the efforts to improve the flow through A&Es are constantly being hampered by the number of patients who are medically fit to go home, yet cannot be discharged. Lacking resources in the social care sector, which has been chronically underfunded and understaffed, means patients who need a care home bed - or even basic