The emergency department at Addenbrooke’s Hospital could risk being “swamped” with patients if GPs go on strike, hospital bosses have said.

The Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH), which runs Addenbrooke’s and The Rosie hospitals, said there is a risk more people will go to A&E if there is a “significant withdrawal of labour” by GPs.

The GP members of the British Medical Association (BMA) are in dispute with NHS England over contract changes that have been imposed by the government.

The BMA has said that the current contract does not address issues around helping practices to recruit more family doctors.

The organisation said it has warned that industrial action could take place unless “urgent improvements are made to the contract”.

At CUH Board of Directors’ meeting on May 8, Dr Ashley Shaw, medical director, said if GPs do go on strike this could pose a risk to the hospital.

He said: “I think the risk is very real, if there is a significant withdrawal of labour by general practice, with the scale of patients seen in the various forms general practices, that could have a significant impact on flow and attendance in the emergency department.

“This is not something formally raised with me [by the Integrated Care Board], but it could quite rapidly have a significant impact on the number of patients attending the department.

“Even a one-per cent change in the community could swamp us, it could be as small as that.

“We have seen in recent years the behaviour of some members of the population change, if they cannot get a general practice appointment in a very timely fashion they take themselves along to the emergency department.”

The meeting heard that there has been an improvement in the number of people going to A&E who are seen within the four hours.

A report presented to the board said the performance of meeting the four hour target had improved from 63.5 per cent in February to 71.4 per cent in March.

Jon Scott, chief operating officer at CUH, said there had been “significant improvement” in the emergency department.

However, he said the hospital was still seeing a “relatively high number” of people coming to the emergency department.

The report presented to the meeting said the emergency department was seeing around 41 patients more a day than it was last year.

It added that moving people out of the department “continued to be compromised” due to a high number of inpatients elsewhere in the hospital.

The Trust said in March this year it lost 126 beds to patients who were still in the hospital after they were ready to be discharged.

The main reason given for the delays to discharging these patients was due to them waiting for care at home packages to be ready.

Mr Scott said there had been “some improvement in the number of people waiting for social care” and said CUH was also looking at what it can do to address any internal issues causing delays to patients being discharged.