1,600 people attend Chesterfield Royal Hospital's emergency department in ONE WEEK

The hospital said it hit the 95 per cent target of patients being seen, treated, admitted or discharged within four hours on three out of the last seven days - falling "just short" on the other days.

Giving the latest weekly update on their Facebook page, the hospital said: "With more than 230 patients coming in every day and 73 of those needing a hospital bed (four less than the average of 77 last week) this remains a remarkable achievement thanks to everyone working together."

The hospital said improvements had been regarding the time patients are seen when they first arrive at the A&E department, known as the 'pitstop'. This is where a person is immediately seen by a senior member of the nursing or medical team. The aim is for every ambulance to be ‘turned around’ within 15 minutes.

The post explained: "It’s fair to say that throughout January we weren’t performing well against this target, but despite how busy we were as a service, we more than appreciated that EMAS also have pressures and demands - and that we all need to do our bit to help each other. By introducing some changes to ‘pitstop’, we’ve made strides to improve and in the last seven days we’ve achieved 80-100% turnarounds within the 15 minute window. We’ll be working hard to keep that up!"

Out of the 1,600 patients the hospital has seen this week, they cared for 30 in the trolley area for over four hours - 18 less than last week.

To cope with the winter demand, non-urgent operations for 100 patients had been cancelled this year but the hospital is now starting to work through the list.

The hospital added that with the number of flu cases now leveling out, the 'winter plan' was being scaled down.

"Like our colleagues at Royal Primary Care though we still have the challenge of our own staff coming down with sickness and we really appreciate how flexibly people are working both at the Royal and in our GP surgeries," the hospital said. "This has been a real feature of the last two-months to be honest – with everyone pulling together to keep key services running."