Northumbria Healthcare ranked best in England for A&E waiting times

A study has found that accident and emergency services across Northumbria Healthcare rank as the best in England for patient waiting times.

The work, which was conducted by the BBC, compared every the A&E waiting times at NHS trusts across the country, ranking each trust based on the percentage of patients waiting over four hours for treatment across December 2022 and January 2023.

Northumbria Healthcare, which covers Northumberland and North Tyneside, was able to treat 91% of A&E patients within the four hour target compared to the average across England which sat at just over 30% over the two month period.

Research also found the trust had 0% of patients waiting on trolleys for more than four hours compared to 48% at Hull Hospitals which is ranked the worst in England.

Compared to a national average of 24%, just 13% of ambulance calls result in a handover to A&E staff after 30 minutes in the North East trust. Of 33,143 patients on waiting lists, just 20% wait longer than 18 weeks for routine treatments in December.

Northumbria Healthcare are not providing comments regarding the study although a spokesperson did say comparisons with elsewhere is tricky because every area is different and the issues are multi-factorial.

The trust uses discharge to assess which it describes as allowing for a timely discharge in the patient’s own environment which is important to get a better understanding of the immediate and longer term support they may need while the discharge lounge at our emergency hospital enables patients to be cared for and assessed while freeing up emergency beds.

This is part of the trust’s plan to keep waiting times down and includes a network of urgent treatment centres as well as a clinical model which helps staff ensure they have the right workforce and environment for each type of patient. This stops every patient arriving at the same site looking for treatment with more specialised options available throughout the trust.

Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust saw 24% of patients wait for over four hours in January 2023. This goes up to 29% in Gateshead Health Trust and 31% in South Tyneside and Sunderland Trust.