Waiting times at A&E departments hit a new nine-year high in the first three months of the year with hospitals increasingly missing government targets, a report published Tuesday said.
A total of 313,000 patients spent four hours or more in A&E from January to March 2013 — the highest level since 2004 and an increase of 40 percent on the same period the previous year — the King’s Fund report said.
The figure, which represents 5.9 percent of patients, exceeds the government’s target that no more than five percent of patients should wait longer than four hours.
John Appleby, chief economist at The King’s Fund health charity, said: “Emergency care acts as a barometer for the NHS.
“The worryingly high number of patients waiting longer than four hours in the last quarter of 2012/13 is a clear warning sign that the health system is under severe strain.
“The pressures in emergency care will not be relieved by focusing on a single aspect of the problem in isolation — it requires a coordinated response across the whole health system.”
Appleby indicated that austerity cuts could further impact waiting times, adding that “significant changes” to NHS services would be needed to meet the government’s target efficiency savings of £20 billion.
It is the first time the government’s A&E targets have been missed since 2011, when Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to keep waiting times low, according to the report.
Nearly 40 percent of hospital trusts reported that they breached the waiting time target in the last quarter of 2012/2013, an increase of 50 percent on the previous quarter, the charity said.
The King’s Fund also said that the proportion of patients waiting more than four hours before being admitted to hospital from A&E rose to nearly seven percent in the same period, again the highest level since 2004.
A Department of Health spokeswoman insisted the NHS was “performing well” overall, with 95 percent of A&E patients being seen within four hours over the last four weeks.
“Clearly the NHS had a difficult winter and A&E departments were under pressure,” she added.
“This is partly due to the fact that there are over one million more people visiting A&E compared to three years ago.
“We’ve been absolutely clear that the NHS needs to transform the way health services are delivered to meet the needs of an ageing population focusing more on joined up services and prevention.”
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham accused the government of failing to “get a grip on the real causes” of the problem including frontline job cuts, the closure of NHS walk-in centres and the “collapse of social care”.
A&E waiting times hit nine-year high
