This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
True A&E waiting times could be worse than reported
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has warned that the true number of patients waiting longer than 12 hours in A&E could be tens of thousands more than official data suggests.
The study shows that the way the NHS officially counts 12-hour waits in emergency departments masks the true picture. The college counts 12-hour waits from the moment a patient arrives in A&E – which is how it is measured in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – but the NHS official only records 12-hour waits from when doctors make a decision to admit the patient.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has collected data from 50 hospitals since October with results showing for the first week of December more than 5,000 patients waited longer than 12 hours. From the beginning of October, more than 38,000 patients waited longer than 12 hours for a bed. But the official NHS England data reports on 13,025 patients waiting beyond 12 hours.
The college’s report also showed that only 69 per cent of patients were seen within four hours across the 50 hospitals – the worst performance in the five-year history of the Winter Flow Project.
Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), said: “In a nine-week period, at only a third of trusts across the UK, we’ve seen nearly three times the number of 12-hour waits than has been officially reported in eight years in England. This must be fixed. The way in which it has historically been reported does our patients a disservice and hides the true scale of the problem of corridor care.”
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “We have to find ways of reducing the demand on our emergency departments – this survey is further evidence of the colossal pressures on staff and the real suffering of thousands of patients. It is small wonder that most leaders say this will be the worst winter ever.”
NHS England is currently trialling new approaches to A&E waits, referrals for operations and diagnostic tests.
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