Massive rise in A&E wait times

UNDER pressure . . . the Accident and Emergency department at the Royal Oldham Hospital

THE number of patients waiting longer than four hours for decisions or treatment in local hospital A&E departments more than doubled in the past year, new figures show.

Combined patient numbers in A&E departments of the Royal Oldham Hospital and other hospitals run by the Pennine Acute NHS Hospitals Trust rose from 20,026 in 2014-15 to 46,371?in 2015-16.

After their waits, the patients were either admitted to hospital, discharged or dealt with in other ways.

The NHS trust, which runs hospitals across north Manchester including in Bury and Rochdale, reported that any patients expected to be waiting in A&E for longer periods of six hours were transferred to a bed, where risk assessments were carried out. Before being admitted to hospital wards, patients were held in cubicles or medical assessment units and not corridors, although patients waiting to be handed over by the ambulance service did remain in corridors.

Matt Makin, medical director at the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "Last year we saw over a third of a million patients requiring urgent care across our hospitals.

"We know demand on our services further increases over winter.

"We always aim to see and treat patients attending our three emergency departments and urgent care centre as quickly as possible and provide them with the best possible care.

"Like most trusts across the country, we are finding this a challenge due to the flow of patients in and out of hospitals and the large numbers of admissions of patients, particularly those who are elderly and with complex and chronic health conditions."

He added: "Patient safety remains our priority.

"We are sorry some patients have to wait longer than we would like to be seen by a doctor and also those who are waiting to be admitted and taken to the ward."

Pressure

The figures come as the hospital trust faces increased pressure across all its A&E departments including a year-on-year rise in attendance.

The average length of each patient's stay also increased, figures suggest, from just under two and a half hours in 2014-15 to more than three hours last year.

Overall, 317,354 patients were taken to the trust's A&E departments in 2014-15 compared with the higher figure of 320,543 last year, according to the official NHS Digital database figures released this week.

Attendance has risen annually since 2013-14 when 307,593?residents were admitted to A&E across the borough.

In the north of England, 6,419,425 people were admitted to A&E during 2015-16 and 20.5 million attendances were recorded across the whole of England.

In efforts to manage the increased demand over the holiday period, the Oldham NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) operated a strategy to encourage people to use alternative sources of help other than hospital A&E departments, such as pharmacies, GPs, walk-in clinics, or to call the NHS non-emergency number 111.