HEALTH bosses have revealed plans to “significantly” expand capacity at under pressure accident and emergency departments in the North-East.

New statistics published yesterday revealed that the Durham, Darlington and Tees areas experienced the highest rate of hospital admissions anywhere in the country last year.

Figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre show that 340 people per 1,000 residents in the Durham, Darlington and Tees areas needed hospital treatment in 2013-14.

In response to the growing pressure, NHS officials are drawing up new plans to expand accident and emergency at Darlington Memorial Hospital and the University Hospital of North Durham.

Latest figures show that the Darlington A&E unit recorded a 14 per cent increase in the number of patients in December 2014 compared to December 2013.

The scale of the problem is illustrated by statistics which show that in the week ending January 11, some 5,244 patients needed treatment at Darlington or Durham City A&E units - way ahead of the the numbers attending A&E units at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary (3,398) and James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, (3,541) in the same week.

News about the expansion plans surfaced at a meeting of the Health and Partnerships Scrutiny Committee, held in Darlington, on Wednesday.

Responding to questions from councillors about delays to separate plans to move urgent care services from Dr Piper House, in King Street, Darlington, to Darlington Memorial Hospital, Trust communications director, Edmund Lovell, said: “We are planning some more significant work in the Darlington A&E department than we initially planned.

"The initial plan was to knock through the genito-urinary medicine department to extend the space for the urgent care centre. We are now looking at a rather more complicated solution which will create more space in the department for urgent care and A&E patients.”

Mr Lovell said the trust was working on plans that would involve moving the main entrance around to the side of the building, which currently houses a dialysis unit.

This would free up corridor and entrance spaces for use by the A&E department and urgent care staff.

Mr Lovell said the trust was also drawing up plans to create more space within the University Hospital of North Durham (UHND).

“We have also got plans to increase A&E capacity at UHND. There are times when the department comes under pressure and we are diverting patients to Darlington,” he said.

“The number of people coming into A&E has gone up and that creates more pressure. The other side is about what is happening at the back of the hospital. One of the challenges is that we are seeing older, sicker and more frail patients and we need to know you have space to admit them.”

Mr Lovell said it was becoming more difficult to discharge patients.

“Discharge takes time, getting patients home or into a care home takes time. At any one time there are around 35 patients who are ready to leave the hospital but they are still in a bed for one reason or another,” he added.

Earlier in the meeting the chairwoman, Councillor Wendy Newell, said everyone on the committee had been disappointed after reading in The Northern Echo that the plans to co-locate the urgent care centre with A&E had been put back to the end of 2016, after being told that it would be ready in September this year.

Martin Phillips, chief officer of NHS Darlington Clinical Commissioning Group, said he was “deeply frustrated” at the delays to the co-location plans and proposed a new working group, including representatives from the hospital trust, to explore whether the move could be brought forward.