QUEUES in the A&E WAITING ROOM
RECORD NUMBERS OF PEOPLE ARE BEING FORCED TO WAIT LONGER THAN 4 HOURS FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT
ONE patient in eight who attend A&E waits more than four hours - the worst rate in at least a decade. At the same time, experts have warned that maintaining standards of care is becoming “unsustainable” thanks to increasing demand and cuts to funding.
NHS targets state that 95 per cent of patients arriving in A&E should be admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours.
But A&Es in England and Wales are currently falling far short of this - just 88 per cent of patients were seen within four hours in 2017/18. It means some three million patients were not seen within the four hour target in the last year. In fact, the rate of patients seen within four hours has plummeted over the last 10 years. In 2007/08 - under a Labour government - just one in every 45 patients had to wait for more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged. Things were improving, as the figure rose to one in every 46 patients in 2008/09 and one in every 49 by 2009/10.
But the 2010 general election saw Labour ousted, making way for the Tory and Lib Dem coalition government.
After this the rate started falling, and one in every 33 patients was not seen within the four hour time frame in 2010/11. It’s been dropping year on year ever since.
In March this year consultants from 68 hospitals in England and Wales wrote to Theresa May raising concerns over the safety of their crowded A&E departments.
In April, the NHS announced it was suspending its four-hour A&E target until 2019.
Tim Gardner, senior policy fellow at charity The Health Foundation, said: “The current pressure on A&E departments is a result of the combination of increasing demand from more patients with more complex conditions, funding pressures and a lack of capacity in primary and social care services.
“Doctors, nurses and other NHS staff continue to go to huge efforts to maintain standards of care in the most challenging of circumstances, but this is unsustainable.
“There is no single solution for the growing pressures being felt in emergency departments up and down the country, but the immediate focus must be on the prime minister’s upcoming announcement of a new funding settlement for the NHS. “To secure some modest improvements in NHS services, funding increases of nearer 4% on average a year would be required over the medium term, with 5% annual increases in the short run. “This will be crucial for halting the deteriorations in A&E performance and to support the NHS to make the improvements that everyone would wish to see.”