Freezing temperatures across the UK risk plunging struggling hospitals into a deeper crisis as the NHS enters its busiest three weeks of the year, health bosses have said.



Hospitals are braced for a sudden spike in emergency admissions for broken limbs and chronic breathing problems. The organisation that represents hospital trusts in England said the NHS, already facing “winter all year round”, risked being plunged into an “Arctic winter” in the days ahead.

Almost 30 hospitals have issued black alerts this week after becoming so overloaded they cannot provide a normal range of services or guarantee patient safety. Some hospitals have been forced to use rehabilitation gyms and neurological wards for emergency beds, and others have cancelled operations.



The British Lung Foundation said the cold weather was already resulting in an increase in patients presenting with potentially fatal respiratory conditions. Worse weather is due over the next few days.



Dr Nicholas Hopkinson, the charity’s medical adviser and a consultant chest physician at London’s Royal Brompton hospital, said people with diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or who were undergoing cancer treatment could be at higher risk of developing pneumonia, given the temperatures. Elderly people and children could also be at particular risk, he added.

On Friday morning the NHS will publish data that is expected to reveal the extent of the strain hospitals were put under last week.

Saffron Cordery, director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said: “The NHS and providers are under the most serious pressure they have seen for a very long time. Accident and emergency is a litmus test for what is happening across the system.



“When [trusts] are already running at capacity, to know there is more coming down the line is worrying. Trusts are saying it is the worst they have seen in terms of the numbers coming through the door, the inability to admit emergencies and because of the delayed transfer of care.

“What we are seeing increasingly is the cuts in wider services biting. At the moment in the NHS it’s winter all year round, and what we have at the moment is like an Arctic winter rather than a usual European winter.”

Hospitals are having to put in place unusual measures to cope with demand. In an internal memo seen by the Guardian, a senior A&E doctor at West Suffolk hospital warned colleagues that all other trusts in the area were on internal major incident alerts and West Suffolk was seen as the “last man standing”.



The doctor wrote on 6 January: “Hospital clinical and ancillary staff are being asked to come up with anything extra they can do to keep the place afloat.” He said patients had been diverted from other hospitals and “the fear is that if this continues then this trust will fall over and we will be in the same state as others at the beginning of next week.”

The Royal Surrey hospital in Guildford, which is used by many constituents of the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has had to turn a gym into an overflow ward to help it cope with admissions.

A spokesperson said the hospital, which was on the highest alert status at the beginning of this week, had opened additional beds and was working closely with nearby trusts to deal with demand.

At the Royal London in Whitechapel, the biggest hospital in Europe, patients were returning from operations to find their bed already taken by another person, the Evening Standard reported. A Barts Health spokesman said: “As a major trauma centre, on occasion we will be required to provide a bed urgently for people involved in serious incidents such as road accidents and victims of violence.”

Hillingdon hospital in west London has been operating under a level 5 black alert for three days, and a spokeswoman said all areas had been assessed to find extra space. It was facing an “unprecedented amount of pressure” and experiencing its highest ever level of activity in A&E. The hospital has had to transfer acute patients into its surgical centre and to neuro-rehabilitation and orthopedic wards.



The Royal College of GPs said the cold snap was likely to put further pressure on GP surgeries. Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard, the college’s chair, said: “It feels like we are starting from a worse place. Because the shortage of resource in terms of staff, the finances, it feels like it’s biting hard this year. That’s how it feels on the frontline.”

Dr Andrew Goddard, head of clinical and professional affairs at the Royal College of Physicians, said tales of crisis in the NHS were not isolated incidents but were happening throughout the UK.

“Lives are at risk, it is really hard to say if lives are being lost as a result but we do know that when A&E is very busy mortality rates go up, people are more likely to die in hospitals that are busy and overcrowded,” he said.