A&E waiting times have surged amid problems with computer systems at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.
A temporary hitch with new patient record software has been causing delays for people waiting to be seen in casualty.
Hospital bosses have admitted things are running more slowly while the system is bedded in.
Last week the new electronic patient record (EPR) system was blamed for taking some of the hospitals phones down.
Patients have now contacted the Examiner saying A&E waiting times almost doubled in recent days, with people left unseen far longer than the NHS four hour target.
One woman has revealed there was an eight-hour wait to be seen on Monday night when she accompanied her 93-year-old grandma.
Another said the waiting room was “heaving” and nurses were telling people that seven hours was the likely wait to be seen.
A caller to the Examiner, who took her elderly father-in-law to the infirmary’s A&E with bleeding at 10pm, said she had been told of a five to seven hour wait.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said: “When we got there it was absolutely packed, standing room only.
“One man said he had been there four hours and hadn’t even been triaged.
“We were told it would be five to seven hours wait, which would have left us there until 5am.
“The bleeding stopped so we went home but this is an unacceptable state of affairs.”
Calderdale and Huddersfield’s clinical lead for the emergency department, Dr Mark Davies, said: “In A&E, all patients are triaged and the most urgently in need of our care are seen by our teams as priority patients.
“We are in the early days of introducing a new system called EPR.
“We have been informing all patients on arrival that those with non-serious conditions may experience some delays during their visit.
“Once fully implemented the new system will lead to better care for all our patients.
“For those who are concerned about having to wait, there are other healthcare options such as pharmacies, GPs and 111 service and we would ask people to consider these for less urgent conditions.”
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust is known to have installed the new EPR system over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend.
A source in the Yorkshire Ambulance Service told the Examiner that it had been delaying ambulance crews and had been a factor in an injured man’s one-hour and 10 minute wait for an ambulance in Meltham on Bank Holiday Monday.
Another source told the Examiner that a number of the hospital’s non-clinical back office staff had been asked to work shifts over the weekend to manage the additional paper work while the computer systems were overhauled.
In 2014 the Examiner revealed a team of 14 hospital managers spent £39,000 on a 10-day fact-finding trip to the USA to decide which EPR system to buy.
