Hull hospitals ranked the worst for A&E wait times

Data from NHS England has exposed the worst hospitals in England that had the longest A&E wait times after health services experienced the worst winter on record for almost 20 years.

BBC analysis of the NHS data for hospitals during December 2022 and January 2023 shows Hull University Hospitals as being the worst for A&E waits. The operational standard for waiting times is 95% of patients should be admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours of their arrival at an A&E department.  

However, figures revealed in Hull hospitals that 57% of patients were left waiting for longer.

After Hull, trusts in Hereford, Shrewsbury and Telford and West Yorkshire were amongst the worst for the longest waits. Data displayed the chance of waiting more than four hours at A&E in the 10 worst-performing trusts was at least five times greater than it was at the best.

However, long wait times have not been felt evenly across the country – a stark North/South divide is shown within the data.

Trusts with the shortest wait times include Royal Cornwall Hospitals, Salisbury, Norfolk and Norwich Hospitals and St George’s Hospitals in London. Although trusts in Blackpool and Sheffield are also listed. Northumbria healthcare was also found as ultimately having the shortest wait times.

The reason behind hospitals struggling to quickly treat patients admitted to A&E is because hospitals are facing severe bed and staff shortages – ambulance crews have faced delays handing patients over to A&E staff, resulting in leaving them on trolleys in the middle of corridors.

Against this backdrop, a way around the problem can be found in the way Northumbria healthcare treats patients. Despite the trust having ambulance crews queue outside, Northumbria healthcare runs both hospitals and community services, meaning patients can be discharged quicker as they control their care outside of hospital.

In contrast, Hull’s medical trust is set up under the traditional healthcare model – it runs the local hospitals, while community services are delivered by other organisations. 

Professor Makani Purva, Deputy Chief Medical Officer at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust stated every day this winter there has been the equivalent of eight hospital wards full of patients who no longer needed to be there but could not be discharged until community support was in place.

Professor Purva told the BBC: ‘Our emergency department has been under intense pressure. We apologise to patients waiting too long to be seen and those facing delays in admission.’ 

The research analysed is based on information from the trusts submitting data on four-hour waits – 14 services opted out of this as they are piloting new ways of measuring performance for the government. 

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