The Minister of Health discounted news of overcrowding at the hospital, saying the increase in patients was handled better this year then ever before.

Nelson Bascome was speaking on the floor of the House of Assembly yesterday to correct the headline in the Mid Ocean News newspaper detailing problems at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

The headline read: "Overcrowding crisis forces patients into ER corridors for urgent medical attention" and the story described how ward South 6, which can only be accessed through the Emergency Room, was being filled by overflow patients from other wards.

Compounding the problem was the breakdown of a vital cardiac monitoring system leaving those patients to take up beds allocated to the ER.

If the ER department gets busy, then: 'overflow ER patients are housed and treated in the corridors and sitting areas of the ER itself', according to the article.

But yesterday Mr. Bascome disputed this account and said the record of overflow days for patients at the hospital had dropped significantly.

He said: "If wards are full, the hospital has additional capacity to temporarily care for them in the ward called Sixth South. Six South is attached to the Emergency Department.

"This does mean that, temporarily, emergency has less expansion room if there is a sudden peak in demand. If such a peak occurs, then the full emergency area will be utilised, although this does not include the public waiting area in emergency.

"The building of Urgent Care Centres will ease some of the pressure felt and the hospital is already working to improve bed flow internally.

"BHB has been working over the last year to make the admission of a patient from emergency to a ward swifter, so that patients who come through emergency and need to be admitted onto a ward don't wait in an overflow bed.

"This is about getting patients to the place where they will get the most appropriate levels of care. The success of this programme has meant that in the last quarter of 2007, there were only four patient days in the overflow beds with almost no overnights stays compared to 120 patient days in the same quarter for the previous year.

"While pressures have increased in the last few weeks, it is still at a lower rate of usage then last year."

A hospitalist programme and 16 additional Continuing Care Unit beds available in April will help move 16 long term care patients currently being cared for in acute beds.

The hospitalist programme, according to Mr. Bascome, will ensure that patients receive a more consistent level of care and therefore discharged in a more timely manner.

Also alleged in the Mid Ocean story was that the failure of the cardiac monitoring system was adding to the already congested hospital.

While acknowledging the problem, Mr. Bascome said it was only temporarily down and would be in working order by the weekend.

He said: "Telemetry allows central monitoring of a group of people. As our monitors are not working, patients will be monitored individually until the Telemetry System is working again.

"It simply requires nursing staff to be closer to the patients wherever they are stationed. It does not require patients to be held in the ER."