A critical incident in a hospital is a severe situation where resources are overwhelmed, jeopardising safe patient care due to extreme demand, such as flu surges, winter pressures or other major disruptions – forcing contingency plans into place.
A report to this week’s meeting of Blackpool Council’s adult social care and scrutiny committee highlighted the issues the Trust was facing, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.
However, the report also highlighted the efforts the trust was making to actively deal with the various issues, including increasing the capacity of its discharge lounge.
Oldham added: “High demand has been seen across all NHS services in recent years and Blackpool is no exception.
“We know this can impact on the experience of patients and we are working hard to make improvements to reduce waiting times.
“This report highlights a number of areas where important work is taking place and progress is being made, from recently increasing the capacity of our discharge lounge so patients can comfortably wait to go home without needing a hospital bed, to strengthening our workforce where we have gaps in key areas.”