More than two in five patients seeking A&E care at the Wye Valley Trust 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 Wye Valley NHS Trust fell well behind that target in November, when just 56% of the 5,546 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 44% of patients attending major A&E at the Wye Valley Trust waited longer than four hours to be seen last month, compared to 47% in October, and 36% in November 2021.

At Wye Valley NHS Trust:

In November:

  • There were 153 booked appointments, up from 139 in October
  • 382 patients waited longer than four hours for treatment following a decision to admit – 7% of patients
  • Of those, 238 were delayed by more than 12 hours

Separate NHS Digital data reveals that in October:

  • The median time to treatment was 60 minutes. The median average is used to ensure figures are not skewed by particularly long or short waiting times
  • Around 5% of patients left before being treated