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Shock 250% rise in patients waiting more than 4 hours in A&E: Six-month total soars by 146,000 - as Labour says crisis is worst in 20 years

Hundreds of thousands more patients are being forced to wait longer than four hours for emergency care as A&E departments across the country struggle due to closures and staff shortages.
Official NHS data reveals a growing crisis in England’s A&E wards with one in every three patients now waiting four hours or more for emergency treatment in the worst affected areas.
The figures, released by the Department of Health on Friday, show that during the week up to April 7, 33,225 patients were forced to wait longer than four hours compared with 13,081 in the same week last year, a rise of 250 per cent.
Official NHS data has revealed one in every three patients in England's A&E wards now wait four hours or more for emergency treatment in the worst affected areas
Official NHS data has revealed one in every three patients in England's A&E wards now wait four hours or more for emergency treatment in the worst affected areas
An additional 146,000 patients waited more than four hours to be seen in casualty in the six months between October and April compared with the same six-month period during the previous year.
The shocking picture of emergency care – described as the worst in nearly 20 years – is based on information submitted by all hospital trusts across England.
The pressures have been blamed on the reorganisation of NHS services in recent weeks, a programme of A&E closures and a massive shortage of frontline staff.
 

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Since 2011 when the Government scrapped a target introduced by Labour that 98 per cent of A&E patients must be seen within four hours, claiming it had ‘no clinical justification’, waiting times have gradually risen from what had been an all-time low.
Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham said: ‘We have repeatedly warned Jeremy Hunt about the intense pressures on A&E and urged him to get a grip. His failure to face up to this problem cannot continue.
‘England’s A&Es are struggling in a way not seen since the bad old days of the mid-Nineties.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt (right) with Watford MP Richard Harrington (left) and Samantha Jones (centre), chief executive of West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, last week
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt (right) with Watford MP Richard Harrington (left) and Samantha Jones (centre), chief executive of West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, last week
‘There are two principal causes of this increasing chaos. First, hospitals are continuing to make severe cuts to frontline staffing levels, with many operating below recommended staffing levels.
‘Second, deep cuts to council care budgets mean patients can’t be discharged from hospital beds.
‘With no free beds on the wards, A&E staff can’t admit patients, and with A&E full, paramedics can’t hand over patients. So we see long queues of ambulances outside hospitals as the pressure backs up right through the system.
‘These problems are well known but they have been neglected as for months the NHS has been distracted by the biggest-ever top-down re-organisation. Standards of care are deteriorating across the country as the NHS is dragged down by David Cameron’s toxic mix of cuts and reorganisation.’
Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham has said: 'England's A&Es are struggling in a way not seen since the bad old days of the mid-Nineties'
Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham has said: 'England's A&Es are struggling in a way not seen since the bad old days of the mid-Nineties'
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: ‘With fewer nurses and rising demand, emergency departments are now at risk of being overwhelmed. The chaotic closure of NHS Direct also risks sending more patients to A&E unnecessarily. This situation could become very dangerous over the coming months.’
A&E units are now supposed to treat 95 per cent of patients within four hours, but the NHS figures show this target has been missed most weeks since December.
In some of country’s biggest emergency units the national target has not been met since September last year, while in some hospitals the figure has dipped to just 60 per cent.
A Mail on Sunday campaign to save A&E services has already revealed that the pressure on casualty wards is set to worsen with the proposed closure or downgrade of 34 more A&E departments over the coming months.
The latest revelations also coincide with the introduction of the Government’s much-criticised 111 non-emergency phone number, which has already been blamed for increasing the number of emergency call-outs and trips to A&E.
The latest performance report on the 111 service reveals patients in 30 areas across the country waited for more than an hour for a call-back during the Easter period – and one waited for 11 hours.
The new figures show that in one of the worst affected areas, Coventry and Warwickshire, A&E services are ‘close to collapse’. One in every three patients arriving at A&E at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust waited longer than four hours, according to the figures. The Trust said doctors have already cancelled hundreds of operations and appointments to free up beds.
Elsewhere, at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, two in five people waited more than four hours.
At Weston General, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, North West London and Leicester, a third of patients spent four hours or more waiting for treatment, while at Kettering, Wrexham, Bath, Bristol, Worcestershire and Milton Keynes, long waits affected one quarter of all arrivals.
A spokesman for NHS England said: ‘Our A&E departments are seeing increasing numbers of patients, meaning they are having to run harder just to stand still, and the NHS deserves a great deal of credit because broadly speaking it has kept waiting times under control. 
‘We are taking action to help improve performance in future. There will be fines where there are delays of 30 minutes or more in ambulance handovers and we have set a minimum standard so that no patient should experience long  trolley waits.’
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt spent a morning working at Watford General Hospital’s A&E as part of an initiative to give health Ministers and officials frontline experience last week. Mr Hunt took on various roles including cleaning and portering on Thursday.

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