NHS Winter: Weekly A&E tracker Week 19

Winter brings extra pressures for the NHS, particularly in Accident and Emergency departments, as cold weather, flu and other winter bugs lead to falls, chest infections or heart problems.

We have been tracking the data so you can find out how your nearest major A&E in England is coping week by week.

Are they meeting the target of seeing 95% of patients in four hours? How many beds are closed? The same figures are not provided by Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but we aim to include detail about those nations when we can.

94.3%

patients seen in 4 hours at major A&E hospitals

96.3%

patients seen in 4 hours at all A&E units

3,706

Ambulances queuing

for more figures on trolley waits, queuing ambulances and blocked beds

This week at

The figures relate to the trust as a whole rather than individual hospitals. Some trusts have more than one hospital with a major A&E department but NHS England does not break the figures down by hospital. The government target is that 95% of patients arriving at a major Accident and Emergency should be seen within four hours. major A&E trusts missing 95% target major A&E trusts meeting 95% target The number of people who visit the unit during the week These are when patients need to be admitted into the hospital for further treatment. The majority come via A&E, but some also arrive after GP referrals or after outpatient appointments. The figure shown only includes those patients who have been admitted by A&E. The number of people who have waited longer than the target of four-hours to be seen or admitted into hospital. This is an indication of a long wait for an emergency admission. It measures the time it takes after A&E staff have decided a patient needs to be admitted to hospital to the point at which they are given a bed. Ambulances can only leave A&E when they have formally transferred a patient into the care of hospital staff. The NHS is meant to do this within 15 minutes of an ambulance arrival. A queuing ambulance is classed as one that has waited at least 30 minutes. Pressure on A&E can affect other parts of the hospital. This measures the number of non-emergency operations cancelled, which includes treatments such as hip and knee replacements. Some patients, particularly the frail elderly, can only be discharged when the hospital is satisfied there is the right care in the community, either from social care or the NHS, for them to be properly cared for. This is an indication of how many days have been lost due to patients being kept in hospital when they are ready for discharge because of insufficient services available out of hospital. The figures are calculated by adding together the number of beds blocked each day to create a weekly total. Figure is calculated by adding the number of beds unavailable each day due to diarrhoea and vomiting or norovirus-like symptoms over the week. Return to article

Adam Brimelow, health correspondent

Nearly 450,000 people turned up at A&E in England last week - the highest figure since July last year. But performance against the key waiting time target - to deal with 95% of patients within four hours - improved on the previous week.

NHS England says falling emergency admissions and fewer long waits for admission suggest pressure on the system is easing. It all reinforces evidence from outside the window - spring is here.

Overall 96.3% of patients were seen within the deadline. At major A&Es, the figure was slightly lower at 94.3%. Sixty out of 144 big emergency departments were outside the four-hour standard.

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Download the data Continue reading the main story Notes Saint Bartholomew's Hospital is missing data for 8 January. This means that figures for the following categories may be revised upwards when all the data is available; ambulances queuing, cancelled operations, beds blocked and bed days lost due to norovirus.

During the holiday period, weeks seven and eight of the tracker, figures were compiled slightly differently by NHS England. This means that week seven is slightly longer than week eight as the data for the 24-26 December was recorded as a single entry, meaning week seven gained a day, and week eight lost a day for the following categories of information; ambulances queuing, cancelled operations, beds blocked and bed days lost due to norovirus.

In week six of the tracker, Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust was unable to provide the weekly figures for some of the data, so we have used an average from the last five weeks for: Patients seen in 4 hours, Attendance at A&E, Emergency admissions, People who waited more than 4 hours to be admitted and Trolley wait between 4 and 12 hours. We will update with the latest figures when they are available.

Chase Farm Hospital, part of the Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust, no longer has an Accident and Emergency department. The data for the trust now only relates to Barnet Hospital.

The Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH), Bromley, is now part of the King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. We will be adding the PRUH to the search, but to see data for the trust in the meantime please enter the postcode: SE5 9RS.

Produced by Dominic Bailey, Ransome Mpini, Charlotte Thornton, John Walton, Chris Ashton