A patient at a Northern Ireland hospital has been kept waiting more than 100 hours in an under-pressure A&E, health chiefs have admitted
A patient at a Northern Ireland hospital has been kept waiting more than 100 hours in an under-pressure A&E, health chiefs have admitted.
Stat’s included the number of patients waiting to be admitted to hospital wards after ending up in ED. The Departrment of Health says that on Tuesday at 9am there were 399 people with a ‘Decision to Admit’ sitting in local emergency departments. The figure was described as “one of the highest I recall”, by Department Deputy Secretary Sharon Gallagher.
He said that the average number of 999 calls received during the last four weeks was 800, but peaked at 1,000 on Monday of this week. Regarding response times, he said that over the weekend the most serious ‘Category 1’ calls that should be ‘responded to’ within eight minutes were taking 14 minutes and 30 seconds. Still serious ‘Category 2’
Health chiefs say this is largely down to an ageing population which has more complex needs to be treated on their discharge from an acute hospital setting. They say the ‘overall trend’ over the last few years is that the number of ‘complex delays’ where patients are taking over 48 hours to be discharged is increasing.
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