More than 3,500 patients have had to wait more than four hours at Accident & Emergency at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, figures from the NHS have revealed.
Photo courtesy of the RUH
The rise in waiting times has been blamed on staff shortages and a “crisis” in social care.
Just over half (55%) of patients at the A&E department were seen within 4 hours.
The NHS says that 95% of patients should be admitted, transferred, or discharged in that time.
The average across England for patients being seen by doctors within the four-hour target is 71%.
The figures show that performance is currently the worst on record across almost all metrics.
West of England Metro Mayor Dan Norris warned that patients were dying because of long waits, and called for immediate support.
Mr Norris said: “There used to be Winter crises in the NHS but now it is struggling in the Summer months. Yet the government seem to have lost interest while the intense pressure on the NHS has barely featured in this increasingly farcical Tory leadership contest.
“I’m very worried that these delays are putting people off going to A&E who need medical help while others are left suffering in pain.
“The Conservative Government’s response to the crisis in A&E is to scrap the zero tolerance for 12 hour waits. That’s clearly the wrong answer.
“We need a Labour government to get patients treated on time by providing hardworking and caring NHS doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals with equipment and resources they need.”
There are now 6.7 million people in England on NHS waiting lists, as of June 2022, the highest ever recorded.
Nationally, the standard of 92% of people seen within 18 weeks of a referral has not been met since 2016. 1 in every 9 people in England are on the NHS waiting list.
At the end of June 2022, the Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust had 35,298 patients waiting to start treatment.
Simon Sethi, Chief Operating Officer, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust said: “The RUH Emergency Department, like others around the country, has faced a number of challenges in recent months, this includes the impact of COVID-19 on our services and ever increasing demand.
“To overcome these challenges we have focused on growing our Emergency Department team and have introduced a number of new roles which are helping to make sure that those who need our care can access it.
“We have also recently undergone building work to expand the department and increase the number of people we can care for.
“We do face challenges discharging patients from hospital who no longer need hospital care and this impacts on our ability to quickly move patients from our Emergency Departments into a hospital ward bed when they need one.
“However, we are working with the council and our community partners to increase capacity outside hospital before winter to help free up hospital beds for those who need them the most.”
