More Large Ambulance Queues Outside Wrexham Maelor A&E

Eleven ambulances were queued outside the Wrexham Maelor Hospital last night, with one person claiming patients were told the backlog would not be cleared until today.

The hospital has again suffered very high levels of admissions with several ambulances queuing (as reported previously, and a detailed account here on Llanblogger) with the overall English figures making national headlines.

The current national debate follows the release of an NHS in England figure showing 92.6% of patients were seen in four hours – below the 95% target. Several hospitals have also declared ‘major incidents’ as medical staff struggle to cope with patient numbers.

The latest figures for Wrexham were published on December 15th and cover November 2014, rather than the current debates you may hear about nationally which are based on more recent data after Christmas.

The December stats for the Maelor show 70.3% patients were there for less than 4 hours, 89.7% there for less than 8 hours and 94.8% less than 12 hours. There are no figures stated for over 12 hours, however that is 5.2%.

These percentages refer to patients spending less than 4 , 8 and 12 hours in all Wrexham Maelor Hospital emergency care facilities (A&E departments and other A&E/Minor Injury Units) from arrival until admission, transfer or discharge. These figures are derived from the monthly Emergency Department Datasets (EDDS) submitted to NHS Wales Informatics Service by Local Health Boards (LHBs).

Mike from Llangollen wrote last night via Twitter to the the First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones to say: “Sir, 11 ambulances waiting outside Wrexham Maelor Hospital, A&E full people being told backlog will not be cleared till tomorrow.”

We were also tweeted this picture as of 8:30pm last night, with the one above taken around 4pm by UNISON’s Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust North Wales Ambulance Branch.

@wrexham cue outside wrexham A and E this evening long waits expected in crisis what's going wrong with the NHS pic.twitter.com/0fhyYfYm48

— EL Monty (@ELmonty2012) January 6, 2015

National headlines are below, with the figures released yesterday on English waiting times creating the new focus to the issue: