SICK and injured patients arriving at a Greater Manchester hospital had to face one of the longest waits in the country for a bed - sometimes up to 11 hours.
Figures have revealed that one in six patients were waiting on a trolley more than four hours to get a bed at the Royal Bolton Hospital.
According to a new report from the Department of Health, 831 patients were left waiting on trolleys for more than four hours in the Accident and Emergency Department at Bolton during one three-month period.
This is the second-worst record in the country and more than double the number waiting the same amount of time at any other Greater Manchester hospital.
Hospital bosses claim they were hit hard by a record number of patients arriving in ambulances and with winter illnesses after Christmas.
Problems
But they admit that a handful of vulnerable elderly patients were left on trolleys for up to 11 hours at one point.
On average, patients waited five to six hours on trolleys before a bed could be found for them in the hospital between January and March this year.
Bolton Hospital is the busiest A&E in Greater Manchester - with about 100,000 patients turning up every year, a quarter of whom need to be admitted.
Since the review, the Royal Bolton Hospital has invested '600,000 to cut patient waits, with 12 new medical assessment beds to speed up diagnosis and 14 discharge beds to free extra space for incoming patients.
As a result, only one in 18 patients have had to wait more than four hours over the last three weeks. Chief executive David Fillingham said: "Obviously, we want to improve our performance.
"We have been improving in the last few years, but we haven't been improving as much as the rest of the country.
"In March 2003, 41 per cent of patients waited more than four hours; in 2004 that had gone down to 29 per cent; and now we are at 16 per cent.
"During this last period, we have had significant problems with ward closures due to vomiting bugs, there were a lot of chest infections and there was a lot of demand within the hospital.
"We are working to improve on that."
The only hospital with a worse record was Basildon and Thurrock General.
Does more need to be done to cut ewaiting times at A and E? Have your say.
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As far as I'm concerned the Royal Bolton Hospital is the last place I'd want to be if I had an accident. My grandmother was admitted there over four years ago with a suspected stroke. She too was left to wait in a corridor for over five hours before finally being admitted to the medical emergencies ward for observations. A bed was eventually found on a ward at around 8pm (she was taken in by ambulance at 8am). No-one could tell us if she'd had a stroke or haemorage of some kind. Brain scans were cancelled on the Friday and the Saturday and rebooked for the Monday - unfortunately for my poor gran this was too late - she passed away on the Sunday evening. Seems to me like they are still as bad as they've always been and I can't see them improving.