Failure to meet A & E waiting time targets

Failure to meet A & E waiting time targets

By Liz Lockhart

Just a couple of months ago I was an emergency admission to A & E.  I live in Wales where there are different requirements from England but I found the experience very harrowing.   I was taken from my home by ambulance and told that they didn’t know where they were taking me as there were no beds in my area.  I ended up many miles from home, not actually knowing where I was with a wait of several hours in a corridor. 

Finally I was accepted into A & E where I was seen to after more hours of waiting.  During this period I was unsettled by a man in the cubicle opposite me who was obviously very unwell from drug use.  He was a very large man, with menacing demeanour.  He ranted and demanded for almost the entire duration of my A & E check.  Much to my relief he left about half an hour before I was eventually admitted onto a ward.

As I was wheeled round corridors in this strange place I noticed people of both sexes in the wards that we passed.  ‘Do you have mixed wards?’ I asked the nurse.  ‘Oh yes’ she replied ‘all are wards are mixed’.  My heart sank at the prospect of feeling so ill and having to share my ward with members of the opposite sex.  Somehow it felt easier to relax and recover in a single sex environment.

To my horror I was sharing the ward with the agitated man from A & E and two other men.  The intoxicated man continued to shout all night and with no security present and very few nursing staff I spent a fearful night with no sleep.

I tell you these things not because I want to moan for the sake of it but because in this day and age this kind of treatment is unacceptable.  It would now seem that, in England anyway, GPs are fighting back over at least one of the shortcomings which I encountered and the Government has pledged to abolish mixed sex wards.

A report in ‘Pulse’ says that clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have begun imposing fines on hospitals that are failing to meet A & E waiting time targets, in a sign of growing willingness of GP commissioners to tackle underperforming acute trusts.

The report goes on to say that three CCGs in Worcestershire, who have been handed delegated powers from the PCT, have withheld a total of £1.2m in payments to Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust over the last three months. In Northamptonshire, two CCGs plan to withhold up to £56,000 from Kettering General Hospital – equating to 10% of their monthly funding- after it failed to meet operational targets in every quarter in the past year.  GPs at the Nene Commissioning and Corby Healthcare CCG have stepped in after the proportion of patients seen within four hours fell to 92.3% last month.

People who suffer from mental health conditions tend to make a higher than average number of visits to their A & E departments and prolonged waits can cause them unnecessary additional distress.

Below is some information provided by ‘Pulse’ as to how performance has slipped in recent times:

  • A & E waiting times have been an issue since the coalition abolished the Labour target for 98% of patients to be seen within four hours
  • The four hour target was replaced in the Operating Framework in April 2011 by a set of clinical quality indicators – it was, however, retained as an operational target, but at 95%
  • Since then, performance against the target has slipped.  In July-September 2011, the last recorded quarter, 95.90% of patients were seen within four hours, down from 97.02% year-on-year.

I am not one of the many who are against reforms to the NHS as they are greatly needed.  I do, however, feel that it is time to end shoddy treatment in our healthcare system.  From GP practices which underperform to hospitals that are failing to meet targets and everything in between, we must ensure that when we are sick, either physically or mentally, we get the best treatment available, administered by caring, capable healthcare providers.  

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