By Jamie Waller, Local Democracy Reporter
Delays at Nottingham’s accident and emergency department are starting to improve, health leaders have said.
Patients in the department at the Queen’s Medical Centre are now being moved on into other parts of the hospital more quickly.
Nottingham’s emergency healthcare system has faced virtual gridlock over recent months, with ambulances unable to handover patients due to the A&E department and wards already being near capacity.
Nottingham City Council’s health committee was told on Thursday (April 11) that healthcare services seem to have turned a corner.
In December 2023, just over 9,000 A&E patients waited more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged (52 per cent). Last month, this had fallen to around 8500 patients – around 46 per cent.
The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours had also improved from around 900 to 500.
The hospital trust is aiming to fit more patients in other parts of the hospital by redesigning spaces.
This includes discharge lounges for those ready to go home, using seats rather than trolleys, and extra porters to move patients quicker.
Lisa Kelly, Chief Operating Officer at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, admitted that handovers had deteriorated over the last twelve months, but said recent changes had led to “green shoots” of progress.
“We want to apologise to everyone who has waited longer than they need to,” she said.
“Initially, we aimed to offload ambulances as soon as possible into A&E departments, but we started to see a growing number of clinical incidents and poor patient experiences.
“We are now aiming to distribute that risk throughout the hospital rather than all on A&E.
“This has unfortunately resulted in some patients waiting in ambulances or with East Midlands Ambulance Service crews longer.
“We are now seeing an improvement in length of stay in the emergency department – from January to March there was a 10 per cent improvement in four hour waits.
“We aren’t where we need to be and there’s a long way to go to the national expectation, but the data is showing improvements.”
EMAS lost roughly 7,200 hours in January waiting to drop-off patients at QMC; this halved to around 3,500 in March, despite a similar number of call-outs.
Greg Cox, EMAS’s Divisional Director for Nottinghamshire, told the meeting it was diverting patients to other services than A&E where possible.
“The stark reality of the handover delays is that we’ve gone from 27 minutes to get to a Category 2 call in April 2023 to a 44 minute call in March,” he said.
“This has to be attributable to handover delays. There is a significant amount of work to do on the improvement plan.”
