The original article can be found in: Metro By John Higginson
The crisis in Britain’s hospital casualty departments is deepening as soaring numbers of patients are waiting longer and longer to be seen.
More than half of all A&Es in the country are missing their target of seeing people within four hours.
Some 313,000 patients waited longer than the time limit in just three months this year, a rise of 40 per cent in two years and the highest figure since 2004.
John Appleby, from health charity The King’s Fund, said: ‘Emergency care acts as a barometer for the NHS.
‘The worryingly high number of patients waiting longer than four hours in the last quarter of 2012/13 is a clear warning sign that the health system is under severe strain.’
The bleak portrait of life on the NHS frontline emerges in reports from The King’s Fund and another health watchdog, Monitor.
Forty-seven out of 81 trusts failed to hit the four-hour waiting target in the first three months of this year, the Monitor report said. It is an increase from 32 in the previous quarter.In part, the rise is being fuelled by a rise in the number of visitors to A&E, which some are linking to the new 111 non-emergency NHS phone line.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the figures demolished ‘once and for all the Tory spin that the A&E crisis has nothing to do with them’.
A spokeswoman for health secretary Jeremy Hunt hit back, blaming Labour for giving GPs contracts which meant they do not have to work at weekends.
Yesterday, the Royal College of Surgeons said numbers of cancelled operations were at a nine-year high, while last week Labour reported the number of ambulances turned away from A&E was up by a quarter.
