Health managers are holding emergency talks after hospitals in Oxfordshire hit a beds crisis.

High admission numbers left all beds full, although last night the situation started to ease.

Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust chief executive John McDonald has called an urgent meeting to discuss the problem.

GPs were told about the situation in a memo from trust director of nursing and patient services Tricia Hart.

She said the situation was caused by the high number of bed closures across the county's health services and nursing shortages. An increase in patients being admitted to accident and emergency departments had also increased pressures on the hospitals.

She said: "The chief executive of the trust has asked that an urgent meeting of key executives across the health and social care sector address the current situation faced by the acute sector."

On Wednesday night, all 1,500 beds at Oxford's John Radcliffe, The Churchill and Radcliffe Infirmary, and The Horton, Banbury, were occupied.

Agency staff were enlisted and paramedics were alerted that seriously ill patients should be transported to hospitals in Reading or Northampton. GPs were asked to consider referring non-emergency patients to community hospitals - a week after it was revealed that Burford and Watlington are to be axed.

Trust board secretary Megan Turmezei said the scheduled meeting would be between Oxfordshire Health Authority, the county's Community Health NHS Trust and social services.

She said clinical staff were worried about the implications of community beds closing in the next three months. But she added: "This is not a problem that needs solving over-night in just one area of the county's services, so we need to bring everyone together to discuss it."

Story date: Friday 03 December

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.