UNDER-PRESSURE hospital bosses are juggling increased demand for services with a target to cut patient admissions by 9,000, as well as hundreds of staff jobs, within the next three years.

Medics working at Furness General Hospital are operating on the most severe escalation level before a major incident is declared as they struggle to find enough beds for the volume of people being admitted.

New figures obtained by the Evening Mail show thousands more people attended accident and emergency departments during 2016 - 90,690 - than the previous year when 86,709 people sought emergency help.

But plans released under the area’s Better Care Together programme show the Dalton Lane acute care site must actually reduce the number of available beds it provides by 2020.

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To keep up with ambitious timescales set out within the framework, those in charge of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust - the body that runs FGH - would have to close 60 beds, the equivalent of a ward at FGH and one at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, by April.

It would mean doctors admitting 12 fewer people to FGH every day all year round compared to the previous year.

But the trust's directors reported at a meeting of its board of executives in July last year that the target was unachievable following sustained pressures on services from last winter.

The scheme, launched two years ago, was billed as a new blueprint for how health services could be rolled out across Furness and south Cumbria over a five-year period.

It championed moving traditionally-based hospital services, such as blood tests and x-rays, into the community within new GP super surgeries to make services more accessible and save millions in expensive hospital care costs.

It also said FGH, alongside Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, would require 525 fewer staff based in hospital once the new roadmap of health services was up and running - replaced by 331 community-based posts.

Foluke Ajayi, UHMBT chief operating officer, said the scheme was "closely aligned" with the NHS Five Year Forward Plan.

She said: “We have already begun to make some changes that have seen more and more patients being treated in the community rather than in hospital.

"This is better for the patient as it means they are receiving the specialist care they need closer to their home rather than having to come into hospital or potentially travelling to another provider."

She added: "Introducing new ways of working like these won’t change the services available to local people but will see them cared for in a more appropriate setting.

"It will, however, lead to more patients being treated in the community, which will in turn reduce the number of beds that are needed in local hospitals."

The government-backed Better Care Together scheme has secured some success so far with the introduction of a number of projects to help community healthcare professionals forge closer links with hospital medics.

This has included virtual consultant appointments to allow residents in Millom to speak to a consultant without having to travel to Barrow and a direct advice link for doctors and hospital consultants which has helped reduce numbers of excess referrals by 1,500.

Cumbria county councillor Ian Stewart, the authority's public health and community services lead, said there was still a lot of work to do to realise ambitions set out under Better Care Together.

He said: "There's a lot of work that still needs to be done.

"The idea of working with the community to help them better understand their own health and take care of themselves to prevent long term problems is a good thing.

"But there is a long way to go before we will be where we want to be with this in Cumbria."

READ MORE: Ambitious plan to reduce Barrow hospital admissions by 12 people a day