headline: Stoke hospital wards expanded to reduce ambulance delays
text: Royal Stoke University Hospital is increasing the number of patients on its wards in a bid to reduce the pressure on A&E.
  It hopes this will also reduce delays for ambulances waiting to hand over patients.
  f executive of University Hospitals North Midlands NHS Trust, Tracy Bullock, said she recognised it was not an ideal solution.
  But she said measures so far had appeared to reduce ambulance delays.
  It has involved adding one extra bed to a number of wards, with Ms Bullock saying: "We have now very, very few ambulances waiting over six hours, waiting over eight hours - they're the exception now.
  "You'll see clusters of ambulances outside the A&E but they are not waiting for as long as they were doing," she added.
  In one day in August, delays in patient handovers saw 25 out of the county's 57 ambulances waiting outside Royal Stoke.
  Ms Bullock said the hospital was preparing to open another ward in January to cope with the expected increase in patients over the winter.
  would also try to move patients through the hospital and out of A&E more quickly, she said.
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