Accident and emergency performance for December in England has sunk to its lowest level since the data started being collected more than a decade ago.
Against the target that 95 per cent of patients be treated within four hours, the English NHS achieved 86.2 per cent.
This was on the more flattering “all types” measure, which includes urgent care services such as walk in centres as well as major A&E units. When performance is assessed purely for “type one” A&Es, the performance is lower still at 79.3 per cent.
In December 2015 the performance for type one was 86.6 per cent – meaning performance has fallen 7.3 percentage points in a year.
This was against a year on year increase in type one attendances and admissions of 3.6 per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively.
Full article in HSJ 9 February 2017