THE acting boss of Southend Hospital says it is facing its worse bed crisis in memory.

Sue Hardy, acting chief executive of the hospital, said staff were pulling out all the stops to deal with an unprecedented shortage of beds and revealed that delays in routine operations, such as hernia repairs, could continue for some time.

So far about 30 operations have been cancelled by telephone with patients being told their surgery will be rebooked once the crisis is over.

Mrs Hardy said the hospital was using every resource possible to deal with the huge number of patients, including drafting in back office staff.

She said: “I can’t praise our staff enough. They are working long hours and coming in at short notice. Even people who work in back offices who may have had nursing roles are coming to work on the front line.

“It is unprecedented. I haven’t known anything like this. It seems to get worse year on year.

“There are more and more patients coming through the doors and they are very sick.

The cancellation of operations I think will last a couple of days, but there will be a review.”

The majority of patients needing to be admitted have respiratory infections, including pneumonia and flu, and Mrs Hardy said the number of patients wrongly using A&E, instead of going to GPs, had actually fallen a little after recent appeals.

Mrs Hardy, who took over from outgoing chief executive Jacqueline Totterdell last year, is looking at other areas of the hospital where beds could be set up and at more care being provided in the community by the local clinical commissioning group, which is run by GPs.

She said: “We only have two areas left we could use, the day care and elective admissions wards, but we have to balance the risk. We have to have staff in place to provide 24-hour care.

“We are exploring a range of things such as community beds.

“We need to look at whether patients’ needing rehabilitation might best be looked after at home, or elsewhere, but we would need the support in place.”

The crisis will not have helped the hospital’s agency staff bill, which stood at £1.8milllion in October – the highest it has ever been. It will also have had a knock-on effect on other targets the hospital is required to meet, such as seeing patients within 18 weeks of referral and targets on treating cancer patients.

Mrs Hardy added: “It’s disappointing we haven’t met our targets and it’s inevitable it will affect our 18-week target, but we are hoping to be able to see all our cancer patients as required.

“I would really like to thank the local community for their support and help and the board and I want to thank staff."