QA Hospital still missing A&E four-hour waiting targets

Queen Alexandra Hospital, in Cosham, is still missing the national target of seeing, treating or discharging 95 per cent of people attending its emergency department within four hours.

In May, only 80 per cent of patients were seen within the four-hour target with that figure increasing to 81.98 per cent for June.

The hospital has missed the government target for the last two years.

As reported in The News, A&E was heavily criticised in a report following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.

Since that inspection earlier this year, some improvements have been made, including handover times for ambulance crews being reduced, although the exact figures on this are not available.

A spokeswoman for Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs QA, said: ‘We have continued to work hard to deliver improvements through our Urgent Care Improvement Programme.

‘We are now beginning to see some positive results, despite increasing attendances in our emergency department.

‘There has been a significant improvement in ambulance handover times, meaning that patients can be triaged much more efficiently when they first arrive in the emergency department.

‘We are no longer using the jumbulance (a larger ambulance that can treat more than one patient at once).’

She added: ‘We strive to continuously improve the experience and care of our emergency patients, whether they are in the emergency department or have been admitted to one of our speciality wards.

‘For example, we are working alongside our NHS partners to reduce the number of patients that do not need to be in an acute bed for their continuing health or social care.

‘This will enable us to safely discharge patients and ensure that we always have sufficient beds for all our emergency admissions.’