Ashford and St. Peter's Accident and Emergency - tenth worst waiting times in the country?

I haven’t been so well recently so when the NHS figures for Accident and Emergency waiting times came out I wasn’t really up to analysing them the way I used to.

However, this last quarter has produced the worst NHS waiting times for 10 years – even though the Tories reduced the requirement from 97% of patients to be dealt with within 4 hours under labour to only 95% now.

Then again, inside the national figures are some real local problems and here we have one of the worst performances in the country.

Here are the 10 worst performing trusts – out of 140 of them;

10 worst performing hospitals for A&E waiting times - ITV News 

 

  ITV Report

  6 January 2015 at 1:53pm 

  

10 worst performing hospitals for A&E waiting times

 

NHS England announced A&E departments have the worst waiting times for 10 years.

See which hospitals performed worst:

 

  Worst;           Cambridge University Hospital Trust: 75.2%

  2^nd Worst;    Medway NHS Foundation Trust: 79%

 3^rd worst;     Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospital Trust: 80.5%

4^th Worst;  University Hospitals Of North Midlands NHS Trust: 80.6%

5^th Worst;  Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust: 81.7%

6^th Worst;  North Bristol NHS Trust: 82.7%

7^th Worst;  Colchester Hospital NHS Trust/Brighton and Sussex NHS Trust: 83.4%

8^th Worst;  Peterborough and Stamford Hospital NHS Trust - 83.7%

9^th Worst  University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust - 84%

10^th Worst;  Ashford and St Peters Hospital NHS Trust - 84.6%

I’m grateful that ITV did the work for me because it is important to see that Ashford and St. Peter’s is the 10^th worst A and E in the country – not least because they sent me home for a week with a broken ankle.

But I wasn’t happy with those figures. In the past (it’s on my ‘Pages’ column to be found on the right hand side of this Blog) I’ve shown how the figures have been distorted by Ashford and St. Peters.

Here are the figures to be found in The Guardian newspapers ‘Data pages’;

Major A and E                      All A and E             % Type 1 seen in          All A and E

attendances Type 1                                            4 hours or less             seen in 4 hours or less

1992                                        2248                        71-80%                                  75.0%

 

According to these figures the trust’s Accident and Emergency department is up there (or down there, I suppose) with the very worst.

Only 75% were seen within the statutory requirement of 4 hours – or only 71% of the really serious cases.

That’s appalling. How do they do it?

The  national NHS figures include the Ashford Walk-in centre which sees patients who would never go to A and E and can be dealt with really quickly. So, when I needed my dressing changed I went to see a nurse there - no A and E would have seen me for that.

Oh dear, I suppose I may have to take a closer look at these terrible figures one of these days.

Neil Harris

 

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