West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds declared critical internal incident due to staffing and patient numbers

West Suffolk Hospital declared a critical internal incident on Friday due to staffing and the number of patients requiring treatment.

West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Bury St Edmunds hospital, implemented the measure on Friday morning.

It was due to staffing, the number of patients requiring treatment and the number waiting to be admitted.

A critical internal incident is an internal process the trust uses to step up its patient flow efforts to ensure all patients are seen as quickly as possible.

This involves requesting clinical staff to cancel all non-urgent meetings and focus on ‘the mechanisms that facilitate the discharge of patients’ who are ready to return home or to another care setting, it said.

The trust did not see an increase in the number of emergency department attendances due to the impact of Storm Babet.

However, it is generally seeing an increase in the numbers, with 7,159 emergency department attendances in September 2022, compared to 7,680 in September 2023.

The trust stepped down from the critical internal incident at 10.30am on Saturday.