AS TEMPERATURES are set to plummet, health chiefs have opened up an extra ward to try to ease winter pressure on beds.

The new winter ward at James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough is normally mothballed and kept in reserve.

But because of a the recent increase in hospital admissions linked to the cold weather bosses at the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have re-opened the extra ward for the duration of the winter.

In recent weeks the Middlesbrough hospital – like others across the region – has seen an upsurge in emergency patients needing to be admitted onto wards for care and treatment.

With the Met Office forecasting colder weather in the North-East and North Yorkshire for the next few days the new facility is likely to prove extremely useful.

Managers have assembled an experienced team from across the South Tees Trust’s hospitals to staff the 32-place unit.

The winter ward has 18 inpatient beds and a discharge lounge for up to 14 patients, who are fit enough to be discharged, but are waiting for either family to pick them up, prescriptions or an ambulance to take them to a primary care hospital or care home.

This enables other wards and the accident and emergency department, which saw 600 more patients in December than it did the same time last year, to transfer patients to the winter ward, easing pressure on the system.

Winter ward manager Kerri Davies said: “The ward has a wide variety of highly experienced staff from James Cook and primary care hospitals caring for patients with differing needs.

“We are on-call to take patients from the under-pressure areas of the hospital, so the other wards can accommodate incoming appropriate patients - this in turn helps patient flow.”

Mandy Headland, managing director of integrated medical care centre, added: “The ward beds are a key part of our winter plan and enable us to care for the increased number of patients requiring admission to our hospital during winter and will remain open until the end of March.”

Staff were brought in from outlying community hospitals including Redcar, Guisborough, Brotton and from the nearby Carter Bequest Hospital in Middlesbrough.

Ward 11 is situated in one of the oldest parts of what was once South Cleveland General Hospital, before it was massively extended to form part of the James Cook University Hospital.