AMBULANCE bosses are to meet with Royal Bolton Hospital chiefs next week in an attempt to ease the burden of patients cramming into the town's accident and emergency department.

The Greater Manchester Ambulance Service (GMAS) admits many patients have been taken to the Minerva Road A&E from outside the area.

A spokesman for GMAS said: "We are very aware of the problems facing the Royal Bolton Hospital.

"GMAS is working closely with management at the hospital and a meeting has been arranged to see if GMAS can help to ease the burden."

As reported in this series of articles in the BEN, the hospital was given the worst rating in the region in new league tables with just one star out of a possible three. The hospital has high levels of operation cancellations and does not reach breast cancer care targets.

On Tuesday, the A&E department had 24 patients waiting on trolleys in a corridor.

But still ambulances continued to ferry patients to the A&E department.

Ambulance staff follow set guidelines and strict protocol on getting patients to the nearest A&E in the fastest time.

But other criteria, such as patients requesting to be taken to Bolton, are also taken into account by ambulance crews.

As Bolton's A&E unit endured one of the busiest nights in its history on Monday, its neighbouring casualty department at Wigan Infirmary, graded two stars, did not face the same struggle. Meanwhile, Bury's A&E at the town centre general hospital has moved to the Fairfield Hospital near Heywood putting further emphasis on Bolton as a key casualty unit for fringe area patients.

A&E Consultant Dr Chris Moulton said Bolton's accident and emergency was the busiest in the Manchester region, overtaking many of the city hospitals in the number of medical admissions.

Dr Moulton said: "Patients request to come to Bolton. We are very, very successful.

"We also have a very elderly and sick population to serve and it is getting worse."

Chief Executive of the Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust, Mr John Brunt, said that the rise in emergency admissions is down to the general ageing of Bolton's population and the fact it has a larger catchment area since it moved from the Bolton Royal Infirmary site.

A spokesman for Wigan and Leigh Hospitals NHS Trust said that they had seen an increase in A&E, in line with a national trend, but were not struggling to find beds for emergency admissions.

But the Wigan and Leigh Hospitals NHS Trust said that Bolton was not alone in cancelling operations at the last minute adding: "The Trust is very sorry that it is sometimes necessary to cancel operations at short notice and this is one area that we are looking to improve our services to our patients. The main factor causing this is as a result of increased emergency admissions."