Doctors warn of casualty crisis
BMA FEARS ‘WORST-EVER’ WAITING TIMES FOR CASUALTY PATIENTS
By CLAIRE MILLER claire.miller@trinitymirror.com @clairemilleruk
DOCTORS are warning the NHS could be set for its ‘worst-ever’ winter for A&E patients.
New analysis from doctors union the British Medical Association shows that more than a million patients nationwide could experience waits of more than four hours at emergency departments – and a third of a million patients could be stuck waiting on trolleys to be treated.
Similar analysis by the M.E.N.’s data unit for hospital trusts covering Greater Manchester suggests as many as 81,000 people could wait more than four hours in A&E between January and March next year.
That would be 18,000 more long waits than were seen over the same months this year.
It would see the proportion of patients being admitted, discharged or transferred within four hours of arrival sink from 80.8 per cent to potentially 77.8pc. The target is 95pc waiting less than four hours.
The figures are based on past performance – and specifically how the number of people attending and waiting over four hours has varied between the same months in previous years.
The BMA analysis looks at variation in performance between the same month in different years over five years to create potential rates of growth.
The local analysis uses the same methodology but for three years instead of five, as monthly A&E data only goes back to June 2015. The most recent NHS England figures covering September show waiting times were already as bad as the height of previous winters.
Just 67.2pc of people arriving at Stockport NHS trust’s major A&Es waited less than four hours before being admitted, discharged or transferred. This is one of the trust’s worst performances since A&E waiting times began to be measured on a monthly basis in June 2015.
The previous worst performance was 65.4pc waiting less than four hours in January this year, with worse waiting times also recorded in March and November last year. The BMA is calling for health spending to be increased by at least 4.1pc a year to get the NHS ‘back on a sustainable footing’ and for the punitive pension tax system, which is driving senior doctors out of the workforce, to be scrapped.
BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul, said: “Enough is enough. Right across the health service, trusts and GP practices will be bracing themselves for what looks set to be the worst winter the NHS has ever endured.
“Patients should not fear needing hospital care or being able to see their GP, nor should they have to accept that they may spend hours on a trolley in an emergency department, waiting to be treated.
“Similarly, staff working in hospitals and GP practices across the country should not be facing the daunting prospect of having to care for those patients in these relentlessly pressurised environments.”