Derbyshire health system placed on highest level of alert

Patients are experiencing long waits at A&E

Operations have been cancelled as a county's healthcare system was moved to the highest alert level.

Health bosses said that a rise in hospital patients with Covid and other illnesses had put them under "severe pressure".

Royal Derby Hospital, Chesterfield Royal Hospital and services across the county have moved to "Opel 4".

It is when a hospital is "unable to deliver comprehensive care" and patient safety could be compromised.

The Opel 4 status, formerly known as black alert, is part of NHS England's Operational Pressures Escalation Levels (Opel) framework, designed to bring consistency to the way hospitals handle a crisis.

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The accident and emergency teams at Chesterfield Royal, Royal Derby Hospital and Queen's Hospital, Burton-upon-Trent, saw 1,038 patients on Monday alone.

The number of patients with Covid across the three sites rose to 77, an increase from 65 last week with 11 being in the most critical condition.

Berenice Groves, chief operating officer at Chesterfield Royal Hospital, said: "We're having to redeploy staff from our operating theatres to work in critical care units, which unfortunately means we need to cancel some operations.

"We are also having to take extra steps to discharge patients to the first available residential or nursing home bed, which in some cases may not be the bed closest to the patient's home."

Derbyshire health bosses said as a result of A&E departments being full, ambulances needed to wait longer outside before crews can pass on patients

The increased strain on the health system has seen ambulances parked waiting outside hospitals for several hours, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reports.

At one point in July, East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) received 5,000 calls in a single day, with 2,500 normally deemed "challenging".

Dr Keith Girling, medical director for Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said they had been under Opel 4 for 11 days.

"The number of attends we are seeing each day is exactly the same as we would see in the middle of winter," he said.

"We were expecting the winter to be really challenging, but we weren't expecting it to start in September."

Nottinghamshire officials have also warned against unnecessary visits to hospitals, like a person who recently attended A&E to ask medics to remove their false nails.