FEARS of awinter crisis have been raised after Basildon Hospital ran out of beds again.

Non-urgent meetings were cancelled and patients forced to wait longer to be admitted as demand from A&E outstripped available beds from 9am on Saturday.

A peak in demand and a shortage of care home beds has been blamed as the hospital was placed on “black alert”, the most severe internal status level, for the fourth time in five weeks.

Dan Chapple, 39, who set up the Basildon branch of campaign group Cure the NHS, said: “The hospital is going to struggle.

“It hasn’t got the right staff nor the right number of beds.

“My concern is it is going to get to breaking point and the level of care is going to drop.”

The hospital suffered a spike in demand over the weekend, which it expects to ebb away over Christmas.

No beds were available in care or nursing homes in Basildon, forcing elderly patients and those with complex needs to stay in hospital, blocking beds.

In a bid to cope with high demand this winter, the hospital has opened a new day unit to support patients as day cases rather than admitting them to a hospital bed and redesigned its discharge lounge and opened it seven days a week so patients can wait in a more comfortable environment before going home.

It has also improved the way it assesses patients at A&E and added extra staff to its on-site GP service to ensure patients get the right treatment as soon as possible.

The hospital has also called on patients to consider seeking help from a GP or pharmacist was more appropriate for their condition before visiting A&E.

Southend Hospital has never been on black alert.

Basildon’s chief operating officer, Nigel Kee, said: “We have been on black alert more times than I would like over the last few months, but if you look at how long we are on black alert each time, it’s quite short and a lot of other trusts have been on it a lot longer.

“Our ability to recover appears to be quite good.

“The trick is to look at howwe can avoid going on black alert in the first place.”