Almost 1,700 patients wait longer than 12 hours in A&E at York trust

NHS England has published data on the number of people attending A&E departments who had to wait more than 12 hours before being admitted, transferred or discharged.

The figures are for February and cover hospitals with major A&E departments.

At York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, a total of 8,990 patients were seen in A&E in February - and 1,690 of these waited for longer than 12 hours. This amounts to 18.8 per cent of people who attended A&E during the month.

A spokesperson for the York trust apologised for the figures - and said staff continued to work hard during a difficult period.

The spokesperson said: "It is well documented our trust was under sustained pressure for several weeks resulting in the worst pressures on emergency services in our history.

“We recognise this meant many patients spent a long time in the emergency department before they were admitted to a ward - and we are sorry for this. Our staff worked exceptionally hard in the most difficult of circumstances.”

The A&E department at the York trust (Image: Newsquest)

The trust said on January 3 this year that its emergency services were experiencing the worst pressures in their history after being hit by a combination of Covid cases, flu cases, staff absence and bed blocking and many patients were ending up waiting for a long time before being admitted to a ward.

In January, Lib Dem councillors in York said 1,234 patients waited over 12 hours at York trust's emergency departments - and 1,916 waited more than four hours.

Cllr Carol Runciman, Lib Dem executive member for health, claimed the Government had failed to tackle the crisis in the NHS and it was putting people’s lives at risk.

"Far too many people in both York and Scarborough are having to wait far too long to get the treatment they need," she said. "In many cases, this is literally a matter of life or death."

She said money must be released without delay to help discharge patients from hospitals - and a campaign should be launched to recruit the extra paramedics and ambulance staff which were needed.

The King’s Fund health think tank said there was “no shying away from the reality that the NHS was deep in crisis”, after A&E performance dropped to the worst on record across England at the end of 2022.

A Government spokesperson said it had provided an extra £500 million to speed up hospital discharge and free up beds and the NHS was creating the equivalent of at least 7,000 more beds to help reduce A&E waits and get ambulances back on the road.