A prize awarded to St. Peter's Accident and Emergency.

 

Congratulations St. Peters Accident and Emergency, you got a prize for third place.

This article from The Daily Telegraph is a review of the waiting time figures for Accident and Emergency departments around the country over the last year.

And here are the results (in reverse order);

In third place; Ashford and St Peter’s A and E won its prize for keeping a patient waiting 33 hours on a trolley.

They were only beaten by waits of 37 hours and the champion record holder who made a patient sweat it out on a trolley for over 71 hours.

 

 

Telegraph.co.uk

By Miranda Prynne, News Reporter

12 Nov 2013

Around 12,000 patients spent at least 12 hours lying on trolleys after being

admitted to A&E last year, according to new figures

 

A further 250 people waited for treatment in casualty wards for 24 hours or

more, a Freedom of Information request revealed.

 

One person was left for 71 hours and 34 minutes, nearly three days, at North

West London trust, which runs Northwick Park and Central Middlesex A&E

departments.

 

In another shocking case a patient waited 37 hours at Royal Liverpool and

Broadgreen A&E while a third was left for 33 hours at Ashford and St Peter’s in

Chertsey, Surrey.

 

Health campaigners claimed the figures were more evidence of the growing crisis in hospitals’ emergency wards.

The figures came as the government received a warning that the closure of 50 out of 230 NHS walk-in centres in the last three years was putting extra strain on A&E units.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Roger Goss, of Patient Concern, said: “Patients who

are forced to spend that length of time on trolleys will be in a far worse state than when they arrived.

“People feel they have nowhere else to go. They can’t get an appointment with

their GP and their out-of-hours service – NHS 111 – tells them to go to A&E.”

 

Peter Carter, of the Royal College of Nursing, said patients left waiting on

trolleys would be “in distress”.  He said: “The types of people on the trolleys for days are the elderly.  “These are the people who go to the back of the queue. While they are in distress and discomfort.”

 

Medical experts have already issued several warnings of a looming winter crisis

in A&E departments, which are dealing increased patient numbers and staff

shortages.

The newly released waiting times for 2012/13 showed the situation in accident

and emergency departments was getting “worse and worse”, campaigners claimed.

Dr Cliff Mann, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said: “It’s not chaos in emergency departments, but it is a crisis.” He claimed that this winter would “probably be worse than last winter, which was the worst we have ever had”.

 

The College of Emergency Medicine yesterday revealed more than half of

specialist registrar posts in A&E have been left vacant over the past three

years, with many doctors moving to other specialities or going abroad.

 

David Cameron has demanded weekly updates on the situation in A&E units as the government discussed plans to free up beds in private hospitals where necessary to ease A&E overcrowding.

Of course, it’s not the exceptional waits like these that are the problem. The waits of over 4 hours but under 12 are much more common and pretty grim too. You can check those figures (for St. Peter’s) out on my ‘pages’ section under ‘waiting times crisis’

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)