Critical incident at maternity unit as lifts fail

Chief nursing officer Natalie Green said work was under way to mend the lift

A critical incident was declared at a maternity unit after both its lifts stopped working on Monday.

The George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton has since been reviewing all new admissions and is operating a telephone triage system for patients with concerns.

Chief nursing officer Natalie Green said there were two lifts in the maternity building and while one was being refurbished, the other failed, leaving the unit with no functioning lifts.

"Due to this technical issue, the trust declared a critical incident," she said.

Under the formal alert status, applied during moments of pressure on services such as winter bed-blocking, a trust may review operations, prioritising some aspects while temporarily scaling back on others, with other sites potentially taking up some of the slack.

At George Eliot from Monday, all new admissions were reviewed although not everyone was turned away, with telephone triage adopted, Ms Green said, to support patients.

She said the hospital had planned with an external company to refurbish both lifts, but added: "While one of those [was] being refurbished, the other one unfortunately went offline.

"We are working with that company to get it back up and running as soon as possible."

The hospital said it was working to fix a technical fault with the lifts

Earlier, the hospital said it was working closely with its partners and asking patients to divert to a neighbouring maternity unit for their immediate care until the "technical issue" could be resolved.

Antenatal appointments, including scans, were not affected, but the trust advised patients they would have to use stairs and asked them to call to make other arrangements if that would cause problems.

The hospital apologised and said a team was "working as quickly as possible" to resolve the issue.