BOLTON has been warned that it could still feel the pressure on its emergency services this month.

Despite an improvement in treatment times, the Royal Bolton Hospital is continuing to battle a high demand for its services.

Last week Bolton NHS Foundation Trust confirmed that the hospital came close to full capacity in the first two weeks following Christmas.

An extra 52 beds were drafted in at the hospital, and a further 34 at intermediate care homes.

Those beds still remain in place.

Speaking yesterday, a Bolton NHS Trust spokesman said:” The pressures on the hospital as at lunchtime today are less severe than they have been, but are still challenging.

“We resumed our planned operations for the year on Monday this week after a three week break following national guidance, but will keep the situation under daily review according to the pressures from urgent care.

“The situation can change rapidly and we continue to urge people to think carefully before visiting the A&E department, and to consider whether a pharmacist, their GP, or NHS 111/Choices could offer advice and/ or treatment.”

The hospital’s performance at meeting the target to deal with patients within four hours of arrival has increased from 79.7 per cent last week to 92.2 per cent yesterday.

Official figures provided by the NHS show that between December 1 and January 8, 10,919 people attended Bolton A&E. It also welcomed 3,560 emergency admissions across this period, an average of more than 90 per day.

Over that period, there were also 30 bed closures due to cases of the norovirus being found. However, the recorded dates excluded dates for December 30 to January 1 which had been supplied by Bolton NHS but were not shown due to a system error.

The hospital had also made no further calls to redirect ambulances to other services since December 29. The pressure on the hospital had increased in this period as the number of seriously ill patients had rocketed over the winter months.

As a result, between December 1 and January 8 eleven patients waited more than 12 hours for a bed. All planned routine inpatient operations and procedures, and routine day cases that use inpatient beds, were cancelled between after December 23 and January 16.