Wigan patients face long wait to be seen at busy A&E units

As attendances at the department remain high and staff across the hospital continue to deal with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, more and more people are having to wait for a long time to be seen by a medic.

It comes after repeated calls from hospital chiefs for people to only go to A&E if they are in an accident or a life-threatening condition, to allow staff to care for those who are most poorly.

People who did not seek medical help during lockdowns or had treatment for existing conditions delayed are thought to be among those now going to casualty, after seeing their health deteriorate. Wigan’s health bosses have previously denied it is due to fewer people being able to see their GPs in person.

Data published by NHS England shows the A&E unit saw just 60.6 per cent of patients within the target time of four hours in September.

That fell from 66.9 per cent in August and compares to 83.2 per cent in September 2019, before the Covid-19 outbreak.

Leigh Walk-In Centre saw 99.5 per cent of patients within four hours, which pushed the performance of Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to 75.2 per cent overall, which was exactly the same as the figure for England.

The goal is to admit, transfer or discharge 95 per cent of patients within four hours, and while this was met by the trust twice last year at the height of the pandemic, it has not been reached regularly for several years.

The data also shows both casualty units are continuing to see a large number of patients.

There were 8,363 attendances at Wigan’s A&E in September, up from 8,240 in August, and the number of people going to the walk-in centre rose from 4,650 to 5,011.

There were a total of 2,756 emergency admissions to the hospital, the majority via the A&E unit, which was a fall from 2,922 in August and the lowest for several months.

However, once the decision to admit was made, 804 patients had to wait for more than four hours for a bed and 20 waited for over 12 hours.

Across England, a record 5,025 people had to wait more than 12 hours at A&Es in September from a decision to admit to actually being admitted.

The figure is up from 2,794 in August and is the highest for any calendar month since records began in August 2010.

Some 104,875 people waited at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission – again, the highest monthly total on record.

A&E attendances at hospitals in England were 26 per cent higher than a year ago, although this is a reflection of lower-than-usual numbers for September 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of 2.1m attendances were recorded in September, up from 1.7m in September 2020.

The equivalent figure for September 2019, a non-pandemic year, was 2.1m.

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