Patients needing emergency care in Greater Manchester hospitals are waiting longer to be admitted.
New figures show more than 1,500 people were left waiting for more than four hours after being told they needed treatment at the region’s nine busiest accident and emergency units.
Trafford General Hospital has one of the country’s smallest A&E units but in the three months to December 108 patients – almost six per cent of the total – had to wait longer than four hours after doctors decided they needed to be admitted to the wards.
The new figures, for September to December last year, show people were waiting longer at almost all the region’s hospitals – including Manchester Royal Infirmary, Wythenshawe Hospital and Salford Royal - compared with the same months in 2009.
The only exception was the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan.
New Department of Health figures also show more than 2,000 people from the north west had operations cancelled at the last minute for non-medical reasons.
Nationally the number of patients being treated or admitted within four hours at A&E units fell to 96.5pc for the three months to December 2010.
The figure is the lowest it has been since 2004-05, when it hit 95.9pc. Labour spokesman John Healey said: “Patients are starting to see services suffer because of the decisions ministers are taking on the NHS. We are seeing the consequences of the removal of Labour’s waiting time guarantees.”
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is expected to scrap more healthcare targets in April and announce a clutch of other indicators.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “We moved the target for A&E from 98pc to 95pc to improve patient care, on the basis of clinical advice.”
Barbara Allen chair of the Greater Manchester-based Patients Council said: “It is very concerning to heard that waiting times are being extended. We knew when the government relaxed some waiting time targets that there would be some problems but these are worse than expected.”
A spokesperson for Trafford General said: “There was additional pressure on hospital beds in December because of the high number of patients being admitted with flu.
“We have also experienced delays in discharging patients. We are working closely with NHS Trafford and Trafford Council to address this.”
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what can you expect when this tory goverment scrap all the waiting time targets and allow hospitals to do what they want
watch out Wigan, you must be over staffed, some cuts must be coming our way !! and i always rated the local A+E as poor "not the staff" just over stretched, and would travel to Leigh until they shut it down, in and out with stitches before the plastic coffee had gone cold, but no local jab for the wound foreign doctors must think we are made of tougher stuff in the north.
THIS IS OLD NEWS...... hasnt it always been like this???
Trafford Genral highlighted at 6 per cent. Not bad considering it is the smallest A&E hospital in the region and currently under extensive refurbishment,what did the the other nine much larger hospitals rate percentage wise MEN or have you picked Trafford out as part of your anti-cuts campaign and Labour is best mentality.
Anyone waiting that amount of time is not really good enough, but as stated there were many other issues involved including the flu virus that this publication highlighted and added to the problem with idiotic headlines without adressing the problem correctly. Many people just had flu and instead of factual reporting highlighting the difference from swine flu you sensationalised the story`s adding to the panic.
nobody has looked at the fact of increased population size for the whole of manchester and the fact that a lot of the cases that do attend accident and emergency do not need to be there, they would be best suited seeing the g.p or other service. a lot of people that do attend visit via the big FREE yellow taxi and if you are not sure of the number for that its 999. There is a lot of time and money wasted on these people never mind the weekends when the normally well behaved people of the north west consume large amounts of alcohol and turn into cave people and start attacking each other that is why people are waiting longer because we in the Emergency services have a duty of care for the drunk on the side of the road who then has to be admitted to hospital overnight due to the amount of alcohol consumed whilst doris of 85 years with a fractured hip has to wait for a bed.