Half of A&E patients wait longer than four hours at Northern Care Alliance Trust

Half of patients seeking A&E care at the Northern Care Alliance Trust waited longer than four hours to be dealt with last month, figures show.

NHS guidance states that 95% of patients attending accident and emergency departments should be admitted to hospital, transferred elsewhere or discharged within four hours.

But Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust fell well behind that target in November, when just 49% of the 25,234 attendances at type 1 A&E departments were dealt with within four hours, according to figures from NHS England.

Type 1 departments are those which provide major emergency services – with full resuscitation equipment and 24-hour consultant-led care – and account for the majority of attendances nationally.

It means 51% of patients attending major A&E at the Northern Care Alliance Trust waited longer than four hours to be seen last month, compared to 50% in October, and 44% in November 2021.

Including the 6,933 attendances at other accident and emergency departments, such as minor A&Es and those with single specialties, 59% of A&E patients were seen by the trust within the target time in November.

At Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust:

In November:

2,523 patients waited longer than four hours for treatment following a decision to admit – 8% of patients

Of those, 751 were delayed by more than 12 hours

Separate NHS Digital data reveals that in October:

The median time to treatment was 106 minutes. The median average is used to ensure figures are not skewed by particularly long or short waiting times

Around 7% of patients left before being treated