Accident and emergency units in England have missed the official waiting time target over the past three months by the biggest margin in a decade, with 91.8% of patients being treated or discharged within four hours.
The latest quarterly figures from NHS England testify to the relentless pressure on hospital A&E departments as well as walk-in and urgent care centres, where patients go without prior appointments. The government target is for 95% of those arrivals to be dealt with within four hours. In the previous quarter, to December 2014, 92.6% of patients were seen within four hours.
The performance is worse in hospital A&E departments than in settings that tend to deal with less serious cases, such as GP walk-in centres. Only 87.5% of patients in what are termed “type 1” hospital settings were seen within four hours, which is also a new low – down from 88.9% in the previous quarter.
The figures are politically embarrassing for the government, but Dr Barbara Hakin, national director of commissioning operations for NHS England, said hospitals were doing well, given the very high numbers of people arriving at A&E. “The NHS has continued to deliver good services for patients with last week seeing the highest number of emergency admissions this year,” she said.
“In the last 12 months we have seen more than 22 million patients at A&E, an increase of 2.7% on 2013/14 with more than 5.4 million emergency admissions – an increase of 4% on the previous year. In the face of this intense and ongoing pressure our staff continued to admit or treat and discharge more than nine out of 10 patients within four hours. This represents an incredible effort by NHS staff over the course of the year.”
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