HOSPITAL bosses in East Lancashire may look to India to plug gaps in the number of consultants running the accident and emergency department.

The equivalent of four-and-a-half consultants are deployed in the casualty ward at Royal Blackburn Hospital, health chiefs have been told.

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And an ‘aggressive’ recruitment campaign is underway to bolster their numbers, according to the head of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust.

But board members were told the trust, which also looks after Burnley General and Accrington Victoria Hospitals, may have to look to the Indian sub-continent for staff.

Under the latest performance figures, the trust’s success rate in seeing patients within four hours had dropped to 88.15 per cent for January, down from 94.49 per cent, against a target of 95 per cent.

The accident and emergency unit at the Royal Blackburn is acknowledge as the busiest in the north-west and is considered to be one of the most hard-pressed in the UK, seeing between around 55,000 and 60,000 patients per year.

Leaders of the College of Emergency Medicine recommend that emergency departments should have a minimum of 10 full-time equivalent consultants.

Kevin McGee, the hospital’s chief executive, said: “We have got a detailed action plan that involves an aggressive recruitment campaign.”

He told the hospitals’ board that he was ‘encouraged’ that the introduction of a recent cap on agency spending might drive more consultants, currently operating as locums, towards the full-time jobs market.

Locums are often used to fill any shortfalls in staff numbers.

Kevin Moynes, the trust’s human resources director, said that the organisation would begin initially by restarting the placing of advertisements with the British Medical Journal for the senior staff.

He said: “We are looking at costing up for the recruitment and retention framework for new and existing staff. We are also looking at going overseas to India. I think there is also something to be said for re-skilling people.”

This work would include talking with the likes of local GPs with special interests and nurse consultants, said Mr Moynes.

Gill Simpson, the trust’s operations director, said performance issues within the accident and emergency department were finely balanced and it only took one or two factors to derail a smooth-running shift.

Work is ongoing with the North West Ambulance Service to tackle the rate at which ambulances can be released from the A&E department, with up to a dozen left queuing outside the Royal Blackburn during busy periods.

For every significant breach of the four-hour rule, and delays in ambulance handovers, NHS trusts face fines. The four-hour penalties currently total £340,000 and the ambulance handover levy is £980,000.

Non-executive director Peter Rowe said: “We have analysed this so many times and we all now the things that we need to do to make it work.”

Stephen Barnes, another non-executive director, has also raised calls for the trust to hold Lancashire County Council to account, to prevent bed blocking, as the authority has now been allocated a larger proportion of care funding.