MORE than £2.5 million of government cash is to be ploughed into Worcestershire’s three acute hospitals in an effort to deal with pressures over the winter.

The investment is part of a £300 million pot announced by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Friday, November 14 in the face of what he called “unprecedented demand” on the NHS over the winter.

The £2.6 million windfall will be used to help Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust – which runs Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Kidderminster Hospital and Redditch’s Alexandra Hospital – deal with the predicted increase in patients over the colder months.

A trust spokesman said some of the cash would be used to fund a new ward with extra bed capacity, expected to be open until March.

“It is going to be used to fund increased staffing levels mainly in A&E but also on other wards,” he said.

The trust struggled to keep up with the amount of people visiting A&E last winter, and still has a significant backlog of patients waiting for elective operations, with 14,585 currently on the waiting list, with 1,839 of these waiting longer than the NHS-mandated 18 weeks.

Announcing the extra cash, Mr Hunt said the continued and sustained increase in demand on A&E departments across the country was “not sustainable” and urged patients to consider visiting their GPs or pharmacies instead.

"Winter has always been particularly challenging for the NHS,” he said. “We have been thinking about it particularly hard this year because of the growing pressure on A&E departments.

"Emergency admissions are growing about three to four per cent year in, year out.

“We are very aware that over this winter there is going to be some real pressure there.

"The pressures are higher than they have ever been before in the system."

But director of the Royal College of Nursing in England Tom Sandford branded the cash “a sticking plaster solution to the massive financial challenges facing the health service”.

"NHS budgets are being squeezed while levels of demand continue upwards and the result is a system under immense strain,” he said.

“It was only last week that the government's own auditors warned that the current approach is unsustainable and that NHS finances are getting worse.”

Figures have shown 104,100 patients were admitted to hospital last week in comparison with 98,700 in the same week last year.

As well as the two A&E departments at the Royal and the Alex, there are also five Minor Injuries Unit (MIUs) in Worcestershire which can treat a range of conditions including broken bones, cuts, wounds and minor burns.

Waiting times at the units in Malvern, Evesham, Kidderminster, Bromsgrove and Tenbury are also generally much shorter than those at A&E.

Patients unsure about whether or not they need to visit A&E can call NHS 111 or visit isaandeforme.com.

In an emergency always dial 999.