Latest hospital stats make unpleasant, but unsurprising, reading during the Covid-19 outbreak
Commenting on the latest set of hospital waiting time stats, specifically, A & E waiting times, released today (March 19), the Shadow Health Minister Angela Burns said:
“The only good thing to say about these figures is that they offer no unpleasant surprises, just more of the same, and I worry that they are going to offer little comfort to people already anxious about the way NHS Wales will cope during this outbreak of Coronavirus.
“My Welsh Conservative colleagues and I have been imploring the Labour-run administration to improve its response and build in resilience to deal with even the routine and expected seasonal peaks, such as outbreaks of Winter ‘flu.
“Now Wales finds itself slap-bang in the middle of a pandemic because of Coronavirus. We have an already over-stretched NHS, and with most of the health boards in some form of special measures.
“Hospitals – and particularly those in North Wales – are at severe risk of being, I fear, unable to cope should a spike in demand arise.
“We Welsh Conservatives are determined to work closely with all parties during this outbreak, but we cannot stand by without scrutinising and calling for radical change when necessary.
“This is more vital now than at any time in our country’s history, and urgent support must be provided immediately.”
Headline statistics from the report for February 2020 include:
- 74.6 percent of patients spent less than 4 hours in all emergency care facilities, an increase of one percent on the previous month
- Wrexham Maelor was the worst-performing hospital for four-hour waiting times. Nearly 60 percent of people were not seen within the target time. This is down 17 percent compared with February 2019 (57.1 percent)
- Betsi Cadwaladr UHB was the worst performing health board for the four-hour target, with just 63.2 percent seen within that time
- Betsi Cadwaladr was also the worst performing health board for 12-hour waits with 89.3 percent seen within the target time.
Source documents:
phttps://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Health-and-Social-Care/NHS-Performance/Ambulance-Services
