Some hospitals see 300% rise in four-hour accident and emergency waits

It has emerged that patient numbers waiting at A&E departments for four hours or more have increased by over 300 per cent and the number of patients not seen in the target time has more than doubled in 2015-16 over the previous 12 months.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s policy research manager Dr Simon Howse, said that there was no evidence that the rise in numbers was due to the service being increasingly wrongly used.

Dr Howse said “In any health system some people turn up who are not in great need, but studies show the level of unnecessary visits in the UK is very, very low.”

He said that the problem was “a large and systemic problem, in which hospitals are being asked to do something they are not resourced to do.

“They are trying to treat a growing and more needy population with fewer and fewer beds.

“There has also been continuous growth in people over 75 years old with complex needs and they tend to take longer to treat than, say, a 25 year old.”

In the year 2015-2016, 85 per cent of patients were seen within four hours in England.

The RCEM claims that the increase in delays has been largely caused by a shortage of hospital beds and resources.

A spokesman for NHS England has said that the cause is a rise in delays in being able to discharge patients due to social care pressures.

“Hospitals report this affects their ability to quickly admit emergency A&E patients, so the NHS is working closely with local councils and community health services to enable older patients to get the support they need after a hospital stay, back at home.

“Hospitals are coming under increasing pressure but in the main are continuing to cope.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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