Patients sent 28 miles for emergency care instead of A&E nine miles away

Health bosses have said it is one of the reasons why hundreds of people are being made to wait longer than four hours to be dealt with at Royal Stoke University Hospital.

It is around 28 miles from the centre of Cannock to the north Staffordshire hospital, near Newcastle-under-Lyme. Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital based in Wednesfield is just nine miles away.

Mark Hackett, chief executive of University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, said: "A lot of patients from the south of Staffordshire particularly from the Cannock area are moving to Royal Stoke.

"Emergency services seem to be picking up patients from Cannock with things like fractured bones and taking them to Royal Stoke as opposed to Wolverhampton which is what we thought would happen.

"It is happening a lot more now than it used to."

The issue has been identified as one of the reasons why the trust's A&E performance has plummeted in recent months.

In October only 83 per cent of patients attending the department at Royal Stoke were dealt with within four hours.

The national benchmark is 95 per cent.

Although the 14-hour A&E at Stafford's County Hospital has managed to meet the required standard.

But trust chiefs say the main issue at Royal Stoke is that too many hospital beds, which could be used for new emergency patients, are being occupied by other people who have been treated and it should have been sent home or to community care services.

At any given time the north Staffordshire hospital is expected to have about 67 patients who are 'medically fit for discharge' but recently it has typically had double that number.

Mr Hackett added: "There is a clear correlation in patients not moving out of hospital with the drop in (A&E) performance.

"What we have got to focus on is getting our medically fit for discharge down.

"The whole system plan and performance is driven by not getting the flow of hospital beds.

"That's what we are focusing on."

Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust was dissolved in November last year and replaced by a new trust named the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust.

Stafford became known as the County Hospital, meaning the names Stafford and Staffordshire disappeared.

The hospital's accident and emergency department has been shut to patients between 10pm and 8am since December in 2011.

Hopes people in Stafford of a return to 24-hour accident and emergency cover at their hospital were raised earlier this year.

The University Hospitals North Midlands NHS Trust had previously said there were no plans to restore a full A&E service to the County Hospital in Weston Road.

But in the wake of the General Election campaign, when Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt pledged to return a 24-hour service to Stafford providing it was clinically safe, the trust, which runs the former Stafford Hospital, said that the long term strategy for A&E in the town will be re-considered.