Health chiefs have launched a £3m plan to keep people out of hospital this winter.

And a core part of the ambitious scheme is to employ extra nurses to send people out of Accident and Emergency who should not be there.

Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Urgent Care Board is splashing the cash in a bid to release the pressure at the region’s two overstretched casualty wards.

As reported, a massive re-design of Accident and Emergency care was sparked last week by NHS chief Sir Bruce Keogh.

But with Huddersfield Royal Infirmary (HRI) in particular struggling to meet its Accident and Emergency waiting time and ambulance handover targets for the whole of 2013, health chiefs have devised a plan to get them through an expected surge of patients over the cold winter period.

The £3m pot of cash has been spread around the local health service in a bid to head off unnecessary pinch points in the fragile system.

Senior Accident and Emergency nurses are set to patrol casualty waiting rooms to pinpoint patients who do not require emergency care. The nurses will work with a “hospital avoidance team” to direct people who have attended inappropriately to community health care services.

The additional nurses will be provided by social enterprise Locala at a cost of £206,836.

More than £2m of the total has been reserved for the infirmary and Calderdale Royal Hospital, Halifax, to boost capacity between November and March.

Hospital chiefs plan to spend £864,000 on opening 40 additional beds and have put aside £71,544 to purchase beds from the private sector if required.

A further £444,000 is allocated for improving admission and assessment and £761,000 for extra nurses and discharge co-ordinators in a bid to improve patient flow.

Kirklees and Calderdale councils are also receiving tens of thousands of pounds to assist with hospital avoidance work in their communities. Community clinics and GPs are also set to play a part by operating seven days a week through the winter.

All parts of the health service and local authority have also been offering staff flu-jabs in a bid to minimise their own winter sickness absence.

Carol McKenna, Chief Officer of Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said: “Our winter planning emphasis is on helping people stay as well as possible so they don’t need urgent hospital care; creating the capacity and support to help hospitals cope and get patients back home again where we know they will recover more quickly.

“I’d like to reassure patients that despite concerns about how the NHS will cope with the extra service demands in winter, we have a good local record and high quality help and care will be there for people who need it.”

DEWSBURY A&E chiefs have said their site will be classed as an Emergency Centre if controversial plans are given the green light.

Earlier this year hospital bosses proposed downgrading the town’s A&E department and sending more urgent cases to Pinderfields at Wakefield.

The plan was deferred to the Secretary of State in September after Wakefield and Kirklees councillors’ joint health scrutiny panel said it was not convinced the proposals were in the “best interests” of residents.

But following the national announcement of a complete shake-up of A&E departments, Dewsbury Hospital chiefs say they now know how their revamped service will fit into the new two-tier system.

NHS England chief Sir Bruce Keogh has said A&E departments would be rebranded and split into Major Emergency Centres. A spokesman for Mid Yorkshire Foundation NHS Trust said Dewsbury Hospital’s casualty unit would be classified as an Emergency Centre.

He said it would continue to provide consultant-led emergency care from a team of doctors and advanced nurse practitioners during the day with full resuscitation facilities. The centre would deal with urgent illnesses, injuries and conditions that can be seen without patients having to stay in hospital.