QA Hospital boss keen to see continued improvements at A&E sustained

QUEEN Alexandra Hospital has continued to make improvements within its emergency department although its boss is keen to see them sustained long-term.
Queen Alexandra Hospital is working towards cutting waiting timesQueen Alexandra Hospital is working towards cutting waiting times
Queen Alexandra Hospital is working towards cutting waiting times

Recent figures presented to Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust board showed the Cosham site saw, treated or discharged 88 per cent of A&E admissions in April within the government-set four-hour target.

Although this is below the national target of 95 per cent of admissions, it was above the hospital’s own trajectory of 80 per cent.

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It was also an improvement on March’s figure of 79 per cent.

Speaking to the trust board meeting yesterday, chief executive Mark Cubbon said the number of delayed transfers of care had reduced and the number of days patients medically-fit-for-discharge were spending in hospital had halved.

‘For urgent care, it is good to see how well we are doing,’ he said.

‘We need to make sure we can build on these current improvements, make them more resilient and improve them even further. That will be critical going into winter.

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‘We are no longer in the bottom category for acute hospital trusts across the country as a result of the efforts made.

‘This is also the first time we have reached our delayed transfer of care target although there is still a lot of work to do across the whole system.’

Mr Cubbon said while acknowledging the hard work behind the improvements, more can be done.

He added: ‘These improvements are not fixed. It will take some time for us to get to a position of sustaining these performances.

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‘It is important to note the progress we have made and build on this.’

As previously reported in The News, a visit from the Care Quality Commission in February called on QA to make urgent improvements after finding ‘the trust’s performance was significantly worse than the England average.’

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