Responding to reports stating that the number of patients having to wait more than four hours has risen 63%, a Department of Health spokesperson said: “It is misleading to look at A&E waiting times without taking into consideration the overall increase in A&E attendances.
The reality is that last year around 2.2% of people waited at A&E for over four hours, now it is only 3.5%. “Doctors and nurses told us that the four hour standard was not always clinically effective as it focused on time alone. That is why we have introduced a new set of clinical quality indicators to provide a more balanced and comprehensive view of the quality of care. These indicators include clinical effectiveness, safety and service experience as well as timeliness and will allow the NHS to focus on measuring its performance on patient outcomes.”
