The number of NHS trusts that failed to achieve the target level of patients waiting no more than four hours for a bed in emergency departments increased in the first half of 2012, an analysis by Health Service Journal (HSJ) showed last week.
Under the Department of Health’s main performance measure for emergency departments, NHS trusts are required to admit or discharge 95% of patients within four hours. According to HSJ’s assessment, based on the old “trolley wait” target, trusts have failed if 5% or more of all non-elective admissions waited more than four hours for a bed.
The analysis showed that 27 of the 146 surveyed trusts failed in the six months to June, against 14 in the corresponding period in 2011. Overall, in the first half, 66,845 patients waited between four and twelve hours for a bed in emergency departments once the trust had decided to admit them, up from 50,944 in the same period last year, the Department of Health data shows.
The College of Emergency Medicine’s president Mike Clancy told HSJ that the increase in patients waiting longer for a bed was due to the pressure on hospital bed stock. He added that overcrowding was a real patient safety issue.
The drive behind the rise was likely to be a change in practice such as the introduction of a clinical decisions unit and changes in patterns of demand, for example more patients coming in the evenings and during the weekend, according to national clinical director for urgent and emergency care Matthew Cooke.
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