Shropshire faced NHS summer crisis as MP calls for emergency measures to protect patients in time for winter
New NHS figures have revealed that the number of Shropshire A&E patients subjected to wait times of 12 hours was the highest in the country.
The damning statistics also showed that the percentage of patients waiting longer than the government target of four hours grew compared to last year, placing the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, which runs the county’s two hospitals, second worst in the country.
This year, the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford handled over 1,000 more A&E attendances in June and July alone, compared to the same time a decade ago. North Shropshire MP, Helen Morgan, has warned that local health services now face a crisis in summer as well as winter.
The MP said that the annual ‘winter crisis’ in the NHS had now turned into a “permacrisis” with local health services buckling under pressure all year round, putting patients at risk. Helen added that the Government needed to bring forward an emergency package of measures to protect people ahead of the even busier winter months.
The NHS figures show that in June and July of this summer, 2,741 patients arriving at A&E waited more than 12 hours from when a decision to admit a patient is made to that patient actually being admitted. That figure represents more than a quarter of all emergency admissions in the two months, which stood at 10,603.
These ‘trolley waits’ have risen sharply from the 2015 summer period where they were virtually non-existent but the long delays can have deadly consequences. Analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has previously stated that 16,600 deaths in 2024 were linked to long A&E waits prior to admission.
The new data also showed that in June and July this year, the two hospitals experienced the second highest percentage in the country of A&E attendances that took longer than four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge.
More than half of all A&E patients waited longer than the government target, at 54% in June and 55% in July. To make matters worse, this showed an increase on the same two months of last year, when the Trust was ranked third highest.
Improving health services is a top priority for Helen Morgan MP, who has been recognised for raising the issue in Parliament and acts as the Liberal Democrats spokesperson for Health and Social Care.
Helen Morgan, Liberal Democrat MP for North Shropshire, said: “Health services in Shropshire have entered a state of permacrisis. The typical winter pressures that we see are now being felt all year round and patients and their loved ones are paying the price.
“The Conservative party’s shameful neglect of local health services brought us to this point but this Labour government needs to realise that we could be sleepwalking towards disaster this winter unless Ministers take urgent action.”
Helen added that it was vital to take pressure off already-stretched A&E staff after small signs of improvement across the beleaguered Trust, such as the cutting of scan result wait times by several weeks.
She said: “We need an emergency package of measures to protect patients and their families from agony over the winter months and to relieve the pressure on our hospitals. These need to include increasing vaccine uptake for seasonal illnesses, increasing access to pharmacies and by expanding the number of out-of-hours GPs.
“Without them many more people could go through terrible agony not only in North Shropshire but across the county, unable to access the timely care they so desperately need.”
