More patients seen within four hours at Wigan's A&E department

But hundreds of people had to wait hours for a bed to become available on a ward, once a decision had been made to admit them.

The performance of emergency care at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WWL) in March was revealed in new figures published by NHS England.

Staff have been working with partners on the Better Lives programme in recent months to transform care, with waits in A&E and delayed discharges among the areas of focus.

The data showed there were 12,790 attendances across the trust in March, up 14 per cent from 11,211 in February but below the 12,957 recorded in March 2024.

This broke down to 6,924 attendances at A&E (up from 6,655 in February) and 5,866 (up from 4,556) at Leigh’s urgent treatment centre.

The Government and NHS England have set a target of March 2026 for 78 per cent of patients attending A&E to be admitted, discharged or transferred within four hours.

The trust did this for 71.7 per cent of patients, which was up from 67.8 in February and 71.2 per cent last March, but below the performance of 75.0 per cent for hospitals across England.

At A&E, 49.3 per cent of patients were seen within the target time, up from 46.8 per cent in February, but there was a slight drop at the urgent treatment centre, from 98.4 to 98.1 per cent.

A total of 3,052 emergency admissions were needed, which was a 14.7 per cent increase from the 2,603 admissions the month before but below the 3,105 seen in March 2024.

But 1,621 patients waited more than four hours for a bed, once the decision to admit was made, an increase of 10.2 per cent from 1,455 patients in February but similar to 1,627 in March last year.

And 475 patients had to wait for more than 12 hours, up 8.0 per cent from 440 the previous month but down from 492 last March.

WWL chief operating officer Sarah Brennan said: “I would like to thank all our WWL staff and our partners across the health and social care system for their continued hard work, commitment, and dedication, ensuring our patients are safely treated in the right place, at the right time.

“We recognise that sometimes patients experience longer waits in our Emergency Department and for this we apologise. The urgent and emergency services have had a challenging year, especially over the winter months, and much is being done to improve our services to enable us to meet the standards of care expected from us. We would like to reassure you that teams across WWL work hard every day to help to reduce these waits, ensuring that people are seen as safely and quickly as possible, in order of clinical priority.

“As always, the public can really help us by remembering that Emergency Departments should only be used for life, limb and sight threatening illnesses and injuries. If you need help in these situations, you must come forward. For conditions which are less urgent, please use NHS 111 online or by phone, or consider visiting a local pharmacy, walk-in centre or GP practice for support.

“We would also encourage families to support your loved ones with their discharge from the hospital once they are ready and well to return to their place of residence, so that we can support patients who are accessing care in an emergency.”

Nationally, the number of people waiting more than 12 hours stood at 46,766 in March, down slightly from 47,623 in February, while the number waiting at least four hours was 133,957 in March, up from 131,237 in February.