Patients still waiting ‘too long’ in A&E at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, health bosses say

Patients are still spending “too long” in the emergency department at Addenbrooke’s, the hospital’s leadership has said.

The Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust board of directors heard that ambulance handover wait times have been cut despite the delays.

A report presented to the meeting, which was held on Wednesday (March 8) said in January that 1,222 patients had an emergency department journey time of more than 12 hours. This was 11.5 per cent of the total number of people who attended the department.

Nicola Ayton, chief operating officer at CUH, said: “On urgent and emergency care, we continue to really do well and maintain the progress we had made on our ability to transfer patients from ambulances to the emergency department in a timely way.

“Over January we were one of the best performers regionally, and that has been sustained in February when the majority of ambulances were able to transfer and get back on the road in 15 minutes.

“However, urgent and emergency care is a big area for improvement on overall journey times, the amount of time patients in the emergency department from arrival that remains too long, that is a big area of focus for us.”

Chief executive Roland Sinker said a group was overseeing actions to improve the amount of time people were waiting.

He said: “The health and care system remains in a challenging period. Within those challenges there are multiple examples of absolutely fantastic care being provided, but are also areas of much greater challenge. Between organisations must be mindful there will be variation.

“There are areas that have strong performance relative to peers, look at ambulance handover progress, waiting lists and access to cancer care, really strong performance looking after patients.

“That is coming with significant challenges, we have long waits still being experienced in the emergency department.

“It is clear there are still patients waiting far longer than we would like in either outpatient or elective procedure. A very mixed picture, it is important to stay grounded of where the picture is.”