HEALTH officials battling to stem the tide of patients visiting North Staffordshire's accident unit are coming up with ever more imaginative ideas to ease the crisis.

The latest one is to pitch a mobile minor injuries unit in Hanley on Friday nights to patch up often drunken revellers who would normally end up in A&E. But with NHS managers admitting that there is not one single cure to the problem, just about everything is being tried.

Many of the initiatives have come from an external review of the local emergency care system by a consultancy called ATOS, brought in months ago as horror stories emerged of frail, desperately ill, mainly elderly people waiting dozens of hours on trolleys.

With the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority – and therefore Government ministers – taking an growing interest in the problems, radical action was needed and Julia Bridgewater, chief executive of the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, made it her top priority.

That alone should instil some public confidence, as since she accorded similar importance two years ago to the fight against superbugs at her hospital, infection rates fell from among the highest in England to the lowest. The battle is being fought on two fronts – keeping away the hundreds of patents who are not sick enough to be there, and moving more serious cases into wards more quickly.

To achieve the latter, moves have included making an extra 22-bed ward available and speeding up discharges by getting home care packages in place quicker.

All this is already bringing delayed discharges down dramatically.

The new Hanley injuries unit is part of the former strategy and on its first night, 12 people were treated there instead of clogging up A&E.

But delays still persist at the accident unit and the PCT and hospital are about to survey the "walking wounded" to find why they have gone there for treatment which could have been given it more quickly elsewhere.