Four-hour wait target at casualty could be scrapped

‘System not fit for purpose’

THE four-hour A&E waiting target may be axed – after the NHS recorded its worst month ever.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock hinted at the change as data showed only 79.8 per cent of patients were treated within the timescale in December, far below the 95 per cent goal.

NHS England is already piloting a system where emergency patients with the most serious conditions are seen within an hour while minor complaints take longer.

But Mr Hancock suggested this could become permanent protocol.

He told BBC Radio 5 Live: ‘ We will be judged by the right targets. They have to be clinically appropriate.

‘The four-hour target in A&E – which is often taken as the top way of measuring what’s going on in hospitals – the problem with that is that, increasingly, people can be treated on the day and go home.

‘That is much better for the patient and for the NHS, and yet the way that’s counted in the target doesn’t work.’

Downing Street has confirmed a review of the four-hour timeframe, first ordered by Theresa May, is going ahead.

A Department of Health source said the change was being driven by fears the target was ‘distorting clinical priorities’. They said: ‘A lot of clinicians think the current targets are not fit for purpose.

‘If someone comes in with a suspected heart attack and someone else has been waiting almost four hours with a broken finger, the target creates an incentive to treat the person with the finger first.

‘We know we will get the allegation we are fiddling figures, but this is a clinicianled process, not one driven by politicians.’

However, doctors’ leaders warned against the move and called for the pilot schemes to be wound up.

Katherine Henderson, chief executive of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: ‘So far we’ve seen nothing to indicate that a viable replacement for the four-hour target exists. Rather than focus on ways around the target, we need to get back to the business of delivering on it.’

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour health spokesman, added that scrapping it ‘won’t magic away the problems’.

NHS England figures also showed more people than ever are on waiting lists for treatment. Boris Johnson yesterday called waiting times ‘unacceptable’ and vowed in the Commons to get waiting lists down.