A HEALTH watchdog is demanding to know how Worcestershire Royal Hospital's accident and emergency department coped after doctors were told not to refer their patients to the medical assessment unit (MAU) for the second time in less than a month.

A fax was sent to GPs on Monday asking them to wait four hours before sending patients to the hospital's MAU.

The request was made even though there was no epidemic, serious accident or bad weather.

The hospital said the closure was due to the high level of entries in the MAU and reassured doctors that patients requiring urgent attention should continue to be sent to the A&E department, which it said was not affected.

But the Worcestershire Community Health Council (CHC), an independent body set up by the Government to represent patients' interests, is calling for the hospital's A&E figures to ensure there was no adverse knock-on effect.

"We are asking to see the A&E statistics for Monday," said Brian Clifton, chairman of South Worcestershire and District CHC.

"What we don't want to see is people having to wait many hours in the A&E before they are admitted into the MAU.

"We want assurances that there has been no undue pressure in A&E because of the difficulties in the MAU.

"The situation is not ideal and we are concerned that we have these pockets where the MAU is so busy."

Janet Marie Clark, spokeswoman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said she would be passing on the A&E figures to Mr Clifton.

"The level of medical entries coming into the medical assessment unit was extremely high on Monday," she said.

"We, therefore, put into place the escalation policy agreed with the Primary Care Trust."

She added the aim behind the closure was to allow patients already in the MAU to be assessed appropriately.

She said the trust would like to reassure patients that A&E remained open, even though the medical assessment unit was under pressure.

"We achieved our target of 90 per cent of patients being treated within four hours," she said.