General Article A&E waiting times reach nine-year high

Topic Selected: National Health
This article is 9 years old. Click here to view the latest articles for this topic.

Figures from the King’s Fund show that nearly six per cent of patients waited for four hours or longer in accident and emergency in the final quarter of last year.
Waiting times for accident and emergency patients reach a nine-year high, according to latest figures.
The monitoring report from the King’s Fund showed that in the final quarter of 2012/2013, 5.9 per cent of patients (313,000 people) waited for four hours or longer in A&E – the highest level since 2004.
This is an increase of more than a third on the previous three months, and of nearly 40 per cent since the same quarter the previous year.
It means that the Government’s target that no more than five per cent of patients should wait for more than four hours has been broken for the first time since June 2011, when it pledged to keep waiting levels low.

Worrying

John Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund, said: ‘Emergency care acts as a barometer for the NHS. The worryingly high number of patients waiting longer than fo...

Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?

Sign up now for a no obligation FREE TRIAL and view the entire collection