Maelor A&E Wait Time Target Only 63% In 2015 So Far

New statistics for Wrexham Maelor Hospital waiting time targets have been released to Wrexham.com this afternoon.

For Wrexham Maelor hospital, performance against waiting time targets in the first six days of January is 63.65%. The target is 95% of patients within four hours.

In terms of actual patients this means of the 1,073 patients that attended the Emergency Department over those six days, 390 waited longer than four hours to move through or leave the department.

Earlier today we wrote about the queues of ambulances outside the Maelor, and referenced the last published comparable figures from December – which was 70.3%.

A spokesperson told us: “In common with the rest of the NHS, we are facing shift in the demands placed on our Emergency Departments. Thanks to improvements in lifestyle and healthcare many of us will enjoy extended life expectancy, but as we get older this means more people with chronic health conditions need support from the NHS and other care providers.

“We are working hard with our partners in the care and residential nursing home sector to respond to this challenge. We want to reduce the need for patients to be brought into our Emergency Departments and to make sure patients who do come to hospital move smoothly through the care system, of which Emergency Departments are one stage, and return to their community with appropriate support.

“The time people wait in an Emergency Department is the most visible indicator of the pressures on the entire care system.

“However it is important to stress that the four hour target is not a measure of how long people wait to start treatment, but how long in total they are in the department before moving on into a hospital bed or leaving the hospital.

“All patients are assessed by clinical staff shortly after arrival and then treated according to their degree of urgency, and the majority of our patients are in our Emergency Departments for much less than four hours.”

Pic: Wrexham Hospital earlier this morning.