The four-hour standard for A&E waits is the ‘wrong target’, which ‘doesn’t work’ and leads to ‘perverse outcomes’, health and social care secretary Sajid Javid has said.
Mr Javid made the claim during an appearance before the Commons health and social care committee yesterday.
He also spoke about the requirement that NHS patient-facing staff must be vaccinated against covid and took the opportunity to restate his belief that radical action was needed to tackle “failing trusts”.
Mr Javid told the MPs: “Targets work if they are the right targets, and in the NHS I have already noticed there are targets which are the wrong targets and we’ve got to change them.
“The four-hour A&E target is the wrong target, it doesn’t work. It leads to really perverse outcomes.
“If you look at some NHS trusts, all of sudden when the individual in A&E has got to three hours and 55 minutes, guess what? They just admit it. That’s a poor outcome.
“There may have been a good reason to have that target in the past, but you’ve got to keep these targets constantly under review and that’s something I’m doing.”
The long-running clinical review of waiting time standards by NHS England had proposed replacing the four-hour target with a suite of other measures but the government has yet to formally respond.
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Source: HSJ, 26 January 2022
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