Hospitals' worst emergency figures in two years

A new £35m emergency department at the Worcestershire Royal opened in October

Worcestershire’s hospital emergency departments have recorded their worst performance in over two years for admitting, transferring or discharging patients within four hours.

Just 59.6% of patients were seen within the four-hour target time in December 2023, according to Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

While lengthy waits for ambulance handovers improved slightly on previous months, more than 1,100 patients still had to wait over an hour to be admitted.

The Trust’s managing director said the flow of patients through beds and wards was too slow, but that new schemes were beginning to achieve results.

Hospital trusts across England are expected to achieve a target of assessing 76% of patients within four hours by March 2024.

A key issue in Worcestershire remains long waits for ambulance handovers.

Figures for December show just 53.4% of patients arriving by ambulance were admitted to an emergency department within 30 minutes.

“Performance on delays over an hour has improved”, Stephen Collman, the managing director of the Worcestershire Acute Trust told a regional meeting of NHS boards last week.

“But where we have long waits, we tend to have exceptionally long waits: at weekends and out of hours”, he said.

“Fundamentally, the issue of flow is driving the metrics in the wrong way: for money, quality and performance”.

New unit

The latest figures come despite the opening of a new £35m emergency department at the Worcestershire Royal. When it opened in October, bosses warned it was not a “silver bullet” to solving the county’s problems.

Helen Lancaster, the Trust's chief operating officer, said demand for urgent and emergency care was 13% higher in January 2024 compared with 2023, which equated to around 50 additional patients every day.

"We know that many of our patients are still waiting longer than we would like to be seen, and we are sorry for that, but we will continue to make every effort to reduce waiting times," she said.

While the performance of the emergency departments is a significant cause for concern, Stephen Collman said the hospital was now having success diverting patients who did not need to be admitted or given a hospital bed.

In December, a new “single point of access” began triaging calls from GPs and the ambulance service.

Thousands of patients have also been offered same day emergency care, instead of being admitted to a ward or given a bed.