Chief executive’s tweet shows A&E despair
AN NHS chief executive has posted a picture of 14 ambulances queuing for his own A&E unit, amid warnings of a deepening crisis across the NHS.
Andrew Foster, the chief executive of Wrightington, Wigan & Leigh NHS Trust, sent the despairing tweet after admitting that A&E patients could expect waits of up to 12 hours. The former Department for Health executive is among dozens of hospital bosses saying NHS pressures since Christmas were much worse than had been seen in recent years.
Today, official figures are expected to show how many patients faced long waits in ambulances in the period since Christmas, and how many A&E units became so overloaded they had to turn patients away.