A&E wait times 'are improving' in West Midlands hospitals, figures show

Figures presented to the NHS University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS Foundation Trust Board provided an insight into operational performance in the services.

And one of the areas looked at was the percentage of people going to emergency departments leaving within four hours with data showing it had risen to 60.7 per cent in January compared with 57.9 per cent in December.

It’s also better than the figure achieved in November last year but this still falls short of the Trust’s monthly target of 66.2 per cent.

Other data provided included the average time patients spent in A&E falling to 373 minutes in January to 379 in December.

Admitted patients spent on average 741 minutes receiving treatment compared to 755 in December and non-admitted patients spent 239 minutes; falling from 249 minutes in December.

The average time to initial assessment was 37 minutes for admitted patients and 32 minutes for non-admitted patients, both reducing from December where it was 50 and 40 minutes.

The report said: “Urgent and Emergency Care services across the Trust was exceptionally challenged in the winter period and resulted in the declaration of critical incident in early January.

“Despite these challenges, compliance against the four-hour standard improved to 60.7 per cent in January compared to 57.9 per cent in December but remained below the monthly target of 66.2 per cent.

“The trend continues to show special cause improvement against baseline performance for the last 11 months.

The number of 30 minute ambulance handover breaches rose to 4,552 in January from 4,474 with bosses saying this showed a continuing deteriorating trend.

In better news, the number of 60 minute ambulance handover breaches fell from 2,980 in December to 2,730 in January.

The Trust also saw a fall in the number of patients waiting more than 65 weeks for elective treatment over the last 12 months.

In January there were 40 breaches, which represented a drop of 14 compared with in January and bosses were told the Trust is working on delivering the planned zero breach target.

And improvements continue to be made in the number of cancer patients starting treatment within 62 days of diagnosis.

While UHB stays in Tier 1 of the most challenged providers, the 62-day cancer performance was slightly above the 58 per cent trajectory for December at 58.6 per cent. This was also an improvement from November’s performance of 57.5 per cent.