‘Misleading’ A&E figures in England hiding poor performance

NHS bosses are using misleading figures to hide dangerously poor performance by A&E units in England against the four-hour treatment target, emergency department doctors claim.

Some A&Es treat and admit, transfer or discharge as few as one in three patients within four hours, although the NHS constitution says they should deal with 95% of arrivals within that timeframe.

How well or poorly A&Es are doing in meeting the 95% target is not in the public domain because the data that NHS England publishes is for NHS trusts overall, not individual hospitals.

That means official figures are an aggregate of performance at sometimes two A&Es run by the same trust or include data for any walk-in centres, minor injuries units or urgent treatment centres that a trust also operates. Forty-eight trusts have two A&Es and many also run at least one of the latter.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), which represents A&E doctors, wants that system scrapped. It is urging NHS England to start publishing data that shows the true performance of every individual emergency department against the 95% standard.

“The current data is misleading,” Dr Adrian Boyle, the college’s president, told the Guardian. “It’s a good example of a lack of transparency and also of performance incentives. Being open about the long delays in some A&Es would shine a light in some dark places.”

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Source: The Guardian. 28 October 2023