‘Don’t ditch A&E four-hour wait’

THE NHS will be urged not to scrap the four hour A&E waiting target at a meeting with the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine this week.

College president Dr Taj Hassan has called for the urgent meeting after NHS England boss Simon Stevens told the Commons health and social care committee last week a new “clinically appropriate” target would be tried out and introduced next year.

Speaking before the Commons, Mr Stevens said that for patients who won’t need an overnight bed, “three hours and 59 minutes is not a clinically relevant point to decide whether they have to be admitted or not”.

He said it would see shorter waits for

‘It will have a near catastrophic impact’

those with serious conditions such as heart attacks and sepsis, while those with less critical needs could expect “same day” treatment rather than four hours.

Emergency doctors are furious at the proposals which they say could risk the lives of those with life threatening problems that are not easy to diagnose.

Representing the college’s 8,000 doctors, Dr Hassan said: “Scrapping the four-hour target will have a near catastrophic impact on patient safety in many emergency departments already struggling to deliver safe patient care in a wider system that is failing badly.”

He said: “We will be seeking urgent clarification from NHS England and NHS Improvement on their position and describing the likely unintended consequences of such a poorly thought out strategic policy shift. We will also make our position and concerns clear to the Secretary of State Matt Hancock.”

In an open letter to Mr Stevens, Derek Prentice, RCEM lay chair, said removing the four hour standard risks going “back to the days of endless hours of waiting in A&E departments, only benefiting ministers and NHS managers and certainly not patients”.

He said: “I fear you are hell bent on undermining the benefits the four-hour A&E standard has delivered to patients, a decision you claim so-called ‘top doctors’ want. It begs the question who are these

‘top doctors’ you quote? They are not from the leaders of the body representing over 8,000 people working in our A&Es who believe the target is vital for timely, high quality patient care.”

The NHS constitution, first published in 2009, states patients should be treated and then discharged, admitted or discharged within four hours. The NHS’s inability to meet the requirement since 2015 has been heavily criticised.