GREAT Western Hospital could be facing their busiest winter on record.

Swindon hospital bosses said more than 7,000 people had come through the doors of A&E in October, an extra 800 patients compared to the previous year. Patients' conditions were generally worse, with doctors reporting higher acuity levels.

Already, December has proved to be busy at the Marlborough Road emergency ward.

“We really are in the depths of winter now,” chief operating officer Jim O’Connell told GWH directors.

Hospital managers have spent around six months developing a £1.5m winter plan, with an extra 29 beds ringfenced at GWH and pledges from NHS clinical commissioning groups to provide 40 care home beds or money for carers to look after people in their own home.

A new ambulatory care unit will open on Monday. The unit will treat patients referred by GPs who do not need to be admitted to a ward, but require further treatment from hospital specialists before they can be discharged.

The hospital is keen to avoid the situation experienced last winter, when on occasion the NHS trust was short by around 90 ward bed spaces. Growth in demand since GWH was opened in 2002 has meant the hospital needs an extra 60 beds to cope with growing numbers of patients.

Commending the winter plan to GWH’s board of directors, operations chief Jim O’Connell said: “We can never say never, but we all feel as if we are better placed this year with the capacity we have put in.”

However, he added: “There’s a general acknowledgement winter did start early in October. We managed to pull it back in November, although it was also a very busy month.

“The beginning of December has been really, really tricky. In part we’re waiting for the reopening of the ambulatory care unit, so we can get back the 10 beds on the Dorcan unit.

“If you’re looking at patients’ length of stay and their acuity, we really are in the depths of winter now.

“In the site office yesterday we were finding we had patients we couldn’t move into community beds [for example in the Swindon Intermediate Care Centre] because of their acuity.”

Dr Guy Rooney, medical director, said hospitals across the region were facing a busy winter: “We’re not alone. All our neighbouring trusts are in a very similar position."

“In October there were almost an extra 800 patients visiting A&E. That was on top of the previous October which was felt to be the busiest ever.”

Deaths in winter are 20 per cent higher than in summer, Swindon figures show.

During winter 2016/17, the latest period for which figures are available, there were around 110 excess deaths.

The figures are calculated by comparing the number of deaths between December and March with those in the four month periods either side of the winter period.