FRIMLEY Health bosses are “very grateful” for residents heeding its urgent message after Wexham Park and Frimley Park hospitals experienced ‘increased demand’.

A couple of weeks back, Frimley Health Foundation Trust texted residents asking them to only attend if they are experiencing severe symptoms or are suffering from a life-threatening condition.

Dr John Seymour, deputy medical director at Frimley Health, urged people to use alternative ways to access medical care as they anticipated this demand to continue into the weekend.

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Speaking at a Royal Borough outbreak engagement board meeting, Alex Tilley, director of operations at Frimley clinical commissioning group, said two ambulance trusts went into REAP [resource escalation action plan] four, which is the highest emergency position.

She also said they experiencing an impact on their staff cohort and on the Tuesday of that week, Frimley Park’s IT system went down, which likely affected Wexham Park’s issuing of medication.

Ms Tilley said at the meeting on Monday, March 21: “The combination of those three plus already the system pressures and the impact of Covid across the board meant that we took the unusual measure to ask our general practices to update their websites with this message and work with colleagues across the system to text message where it felt appropriate to do so with this message to as much as you can without needing the services this weekend.

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“The impact is still being measured but there was an effect on a lower number of attendances in ED [emergency department] over that weekend so we’re ever very grateful for people heeding that message.”