Health Board apologises ‘to all patients who have to wait longer to be seen’ as latest waiting time data is released

Welsh Government statistics show 77.8% of A&E patients in Welsh hospitals were seen within the 4-hour waiting time target in December – the lowest rate for the month of December – against a target of 95%.

Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board was the worst performing out of all welsh health boards with around one in three people having to wait longer than four hours, while 8.7% of their 17,879 attendances were in A&E for longer than half a day.

The new data release drills down to a local level and for the Wrexham Maelor states out of 5,078 attendances in December 50.6% of people spent less than the 4 hour target time in A&E – that is where patients spend less than the target time from arrival until admission, transfer or discharge.

87.2% spent less than the 12 hour waiting time, with the remaining 12.8% therefore spending over 12 hours waiting.

The local data also shows the age breakdown of attendances , along with sex showing 2,446 visits by males and 2,629 visits by females.

There is no easy export function* for all historic data in this view, so we have manually created the below graph which shows percentage of patients who spend less than the 4 hour waiting times target in A&E in Wrexham. We chose January 2013 as the start point as the data has a note that reads “data prior to January 2013 will not be directly comparable with data for January 2013 onwards due to a change in methodology.”

Gary Doherty, Chief Executive of Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board said: “Our emergency departments were extremely busy during December, and we apologise to all patients who have to wait longer to be seen.

“We are pleased that there has been a significant improvement in the time our patients are waiting when they arrive at hospital by ambulance.

“There has been a significant reduction in the number of ambulance delays since November 2018, compared to the same time last year, and we are determined to improve further.

“An increased number of patients are being seen more quickly, which releases ambulance crews to respond to emergencies in our communities.

“We are also seeing fewer delays for patients who are ready to go home from hospital and we expect this to continue through January.

“Our staff are working tirelessly to provide the best possible care for our patients and keep our hospitals as safe as possible under these circumstances.

“Winter is a time of year we expect to see an increase in demand on our services. As part of our 90-day improvement programme we continue to work with our partner agencies to manage this demand and provide appropriate alternatives so that our emergency departments see only the most serious cases.”

Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board have also published further data, noting during December 2018 they saw 5,090 ambulances at their Emergency Departments and 446 of those were held for over 60 minutes outside our Emergency Departments.

In December 2017 they saw 4,948 ambulances at their Emergency Departments and 1,271 of those were held for more than 60 minutes. This shows a 70% reduction in ambulance delays compared to the same time last year.

Wrexham.com runs the @WrexMaelorBot twitter bot, that scrapes the NHS app data on local waiting times and publishes it to twitter. Earlier this month we edited the output to reflect a recent change in wording that alters the meaning of the data that remained the same.

Updated this bot to reflect the changed wording for the Maelor in the app. Data remains the same, but big different between ‘longest’ wait and ‘likely’ wait. Others use ‘anticipated’ and ‘estimated’ wait. pic.twitter.com/8sIeM3x3Ss

— Maelor Wait/QTwitBot (@WrexMaelorBot) January 2, 2019

For those who like detail on data sniffing – the raw JSONish output has it as a server side variable rather than in-app, so this has been changed at some point for some reason while the data remained the same. Also explains why other hospitals have own definitions for same data. pic.twitter.com/gEQrskIyOE

— Maelor Wait/QTwitBot (@WrexMaelorBot) January 2, 2019

The statistical data counts up to 12 hour waits, and at one point the NHS App and therefore the twitter bot published similar. At some point it was altered to cap the time at four hours.

. @WrexMaelorBot interestingly system returns that as data for ‘over 4hrs’ whereas previously it stated exact time https://t.co/cigdf7ZqJY pic.twitter.com/KperVTrwro

— Maelor Wait/QTwitBot (@WrexMaelorBot) January 12, 2017

* The manual data is below from Jan 2013 to Dec 2018 to save someone else doing similar. If you can spot the export function for a similar dataset please let us know!

Jan 90.4
Feb 88.5
Mar 84.4
Apr 83
May 89
Jun 92
Jul 87.6
Aug 87.2
Sep 84.4
Oct 87.6
Nov 82.6
Dec 84.7
Jan 82.3
Feb 78.7
Mar 81.2
Apr 80.7
May 80.2
Jun 77.1
Jul 77.5
Aug 77.2
Sep 72.6
Oct 73.5
Nov 70.3
Dec 65.6
Jan 66
Feb 71.6
Mar 68.3
Apr 69.7
May 75.9
Jun 72.1
Jul 69
Aug 69.8
Sep 67.2
Oct 69.8
Nov 67
Dec 73.4
Jan 60.5
Feb 65.4
Mar 59.2
Apr 62.3
May 69.8
Jun 68.2
Jul 66.4
Aug 73
Sep 72
Oct 75
Nov 71.6
Dec 71.2
Jan 70.4
Feb 70.3
Mar 69.1
Apr 65.9
May 68.9
Jun 70.6
Jul 67.1
Aug 74.4
Sep 72.6
Oct 71.6
Nov 72.3
Dec 62.8
Jan 61.9
Feb 55.2
Mar 50.4
Apr 62.4
May 64.8
Jun 57.2
Jul 54
Aug 49.7
Sep 50.9
Oct 54.1
Nov 55.9
Dec 50.6