More than a third of A&E patients wait longer than four hours at Whittington Hospital

More than a third of patients seeking A&E care at the Whittington Hospital waited longer than four hours to be dealt with last month, figures show.

NHS guidance states that 95% of patients attending accident and emergency departments should be admitted to hospital, transferred elsewhere or discharged within four hours.

But Whittington Health NHS Trust fell well behind that target in November, when just 64% of the 9,324 attendances at type 1 A&E departments were dealt with within four hours, according to figures from NHS England.

Type 1 departments are those which provide major emergency services – with full resuscitation equipment and 24-hour consultant-led care – and account for the majority of attendances nationally.

It means 36% of patients attending major A&E at the Whittington Hospital waited longer than four hours to be seen last month, compared to 33% in October, and 24% in November 2021.

At Whittington Health NHS Trust:

In November:

602 patients waited longer than four hours for treatment following a decision to admit – 6% of patients

Of those, 256 were delayed by more than 12 hours

Separate NHS Digital data reveals that in October:

The median time to treatment was 123 minutes. The median average is used to ensure figures are not skewed by particularly long or short waiting times

Around 11% of patients left before being treated