Worcestershire Acute Hospitals failing four hour A&E target

The trust has failed the target every month during 2011-12 and is forecasting a year end position of 92.6 per cent of patients seen within four hours.

A report to the board said performance in January was a “significant improvement on December” however, “the number of emergency admissions and the acuity of patients caused delays in patients flow particularly over the bank holiday and in the first week of January”.

The report said from Christmas onwards emergency admissions have been up 7.3 per cent on the previous year.

Improvement cctions put inplace began to have an impact from the end of January until early February.

However, the performance was then seriously affected by
the second Norovirus outbreak and having to close nine wards at Worcestershire Royal Hospital to admissions.