A&E staff treating patients quicker

From the archive, first published Tuesday 21st Feb 2006.

New Government figures reveal how patients using the accident and emergency department at Bradford Royal Infirmary are suffering fewer delays despite the unit getting even busier.

Staff at the A&E department have been meeting Department of Health targets, seeing 2.3 per cent more patients within four hours between October and December last year compared to the same period in 2004.

At the same time the unit, already one of the busiest in the country, is becoming even more crowded.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals A&E lead clinician Tony Shenton said the improvements were due to a better strategy and co-ordination between different departments.

A growing number of emergency-nurse practitioners are seeing a large number of patients and X-rays are being carried out earlier at the assessment desk while patients are waiting to be seen, he said. Designated staff have also been checking the number of patients passing through A&E, targeting those that would normally take the longest to be seen.

Mr Shenton said there was an on-going drive to join secondary and primary care assessments, so patients could have better care.

Attendance figures were up by 573 in Bradford between October and December 2004 and 2005.

Dr Shenton said a year-on-year rise in patients attending A&E could put greater pressure on the department in the future. He said more patients could be coming to A&E as GPs no longer have responsibility for their patients for 24 hours, due to new policy. But this would only have a marginal effect.

He said: "Hospitals seem to be getting busier year by year. The department was designed for about 110,000 patients and we are already over that. If it continues we are going to find that we are tight for space."

Mr Shenton said the rise in the number of admissions through A&E was a knock-on-effect from the increase in attendance figures. On the whole, he praised the hospitals record this year.

"I'm pleased with the improvement in the target figures," he said. "We are working together to improve service and eradicate delays."

More patients have also been admitted to hospital through the A&E department at Airedale Hospital at Steeton, according to the Government figures.

In the last three months of 2005, the hospital admitted 2,551 A&E patients compared to 2,271 in the same period in 2004r.

Waiting times also improved with 98.6 per cent of patients receiving treatment or transfer within the four-hour target compared to 97 per cent in the same period the previous year.

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