WHISTON Hospital’s A&E department is seeing close to 500 attendances a day, it has been revealed.

The pressures to the hospital’s emergency department were discussed at St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust's board meeting on Wednesday.

Ann Marr, chief executive of the trust, said the rise in attendances since the hospital opened in 2009 has been “stratospheric”.

She said the hospital sees around 106,0000 attendances per year.

“It’s gone up by 26,000 in no time at all,” she said. “We never expected this kind of growth.”

The trust is planning to extend its A&E department to help meet the growing demand, but Ms Marr said it will still not likely be able to fully cope.

She said the trust may need to look at whether it can be extended even further in the future.

The admission comes after the hospital’s A&E department experienced its busiest day on record earlier this month.

Rob Cooper, director of operations, said the A&E department is starting to push towards 500 attendees in a single day.

Mr Cooper said: “At one point we were seeing up to 40 people an hour.

"A&E can probably cope with around 20-ish and we were booking up 37,38,39 patients an hour.

“It was really difficult, it was Monday and it was late in the day.”

Mr Cooper said in recent weeks the hospital has seen “Monday-level” activity every single day.

He added that the hospital has seen high levels of flu, around 10-12 cases confirmed per day.

The board were told how around two years ago the hospital averaged around 270 attendances a day.

Jeff Kozer, a non-executive director, said the trust should think about rebranding the department to ED (Emergency Department).

Richard Fraser, chairman of the board, said investment is needed to help meet the demand.

He said: “From a personal point of view I definitely share the frustration that Joe Public is turning up in A&E unjustifiably because they just won’t go through the hassle we all have of going through a GP.

“The other frustration I feel is, nobody could have planned – when we were looking at the plans all those years ago for the hospital – 500 attendees in A&E.

“We wouldn’t have laughed but we would have shuddered at the thought of that. And this is a now issue and demands fixing now.

"This is where investment should be going.”