Nearly half of A&E patients wait longer than four hours at East Sussex Healthcare

Nearly half of patients seeking A&E care at East Sussex Healthcare waited longer than four hours to be dealt with last month, figures show.

NHS guidance states that 95% of patients attending accident and emergency departments should be admitted to hospital, transferred elsewhere or discharged within four hours.

But East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust fell well behind that target in November, when just 54% of the 9,445 attendances at type 1 A&E departments were dealt with within four hours, according to figures from NHS England.

Type 1 departments are those which provide major emergency services – with full resuscitation equipment and 24-hour consultant-led care – and account for the majority of attendances nationally.

It means 46% of patients attending major A&E at East Sussex Healthcare waited longer than four hours to be seen last month, compared to 44% in October, and 34% in November 2021.

Including the 3,168 attendances at other accident and emergency departments, such as minor A&Es and those with single specialties, 65% of A&E patients were seen by the trust within the target time in November.

At East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust:

In November:

There were 2,180 booked appointments, up from 2,065 in October

188 patients waited longer than four hours for treatment following a decision to admit – 1% of patients

Separate NHS Digital data reveals that in October:

The median time to treatment was 130 minutes. The median average is used to ensure figures are not skewed by particularly long or short waiting times

Around 7% of patients left before being treated