When you go to an A&E Department, the government says that you should be either treated and discharged or, admitted to hospital or transferred to another care setting in 4 hours.

Hospital Trusts are to get this right in 95% of cases.

However, that target is not being achieved in many cases and the problem seems to be getting worse rather than better.

For our local Trusts this 4 hour target is being achieved as follows (April 2018):

• Wirral University Hospital NHS Trust (Arrowe Park Hospital) - 80.3%;
• Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust - 88.7%;
• Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust - 85.1%. 

There is controversy which first came to light at the beginning of the year that the A&E data was not being recorded properly resulting in some hospital Trusts seeming to perform better than they actually were e.g. by including the stats of patients who attended Walk-In-Centres.

As reported by the BBC, NHS England is yet to publish its guidance to NHS Trusts on data collection. This will continue to undermine public confidence in the service.

Finance is provided to hospitals for hitting targets including A&E. 

Why are these figures getting worse? There is no doubt that there is greater patient demand (3,100 more A&E attendances each day than there was 5 years ago).  I hope that the statistics start to improve at least for next winter’s spike. 

We receive numerous enquiries from patients who are concerned that they have been let down by their A&E department; usually in the form of delay in diagnosis and/or treatment or failure to diagnose.  This applies to a myriad of conditions most of which fortunately don’t have long term consequences, but in some cases an acute problem has been missed, such as heart attack or stroke which can lead to devastating consequences.

If you have been affected by any of the problems discussed in this article and would like to make an A & E compensation claim, please click here for a call back or message us your enquiry.