Shropshire A&E units 'among the worst performing in UK'

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust (SaTH), which runs the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford and the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, has ranked 29th on a list of the NHS's worst performing accident and emergency departments.

The list, drawn up following January performance times, also features the Countess of Chester ranking 15th and Worcester Acute Hospital 24th.

It comes as last week, at a meeting of Telford & Wrekin's Clinical Commissioning Group, it was revealed a quarter of people attending A&E at Shropshire's two main hospitals in the past fortnight are having to wait four hours or more to be dealt with.

Debbie Kadum, chief operating officer at SaTH, today apologised to anyone who has had to wait longer for care over winter months.

She said: "This winter our health and social care services have been under greater pressure than ever. We have seen a tremendous increase on demand in our GP surgeries, ambulances services and in our hospitals.

"In our emergency departments, some people have waited longer than the four-hour standard before we can complete the treatment they need and either admit them to a hospital bed, arrange the next step in their treatment and care or meet their needs so they can safely go home.

"I sincerely apologise to anyone who has experienced a longer wait for care."

Bosses of the 30 worst performing trusts were called into crisis meetings by NHS Improvement head Jim Mackey as they struggle to meet targets requiring 95 per cent of patients to be treated within four hours.

Mr Mackey told bosses they need to achieve targets of 85 per cent by the second quarter of 2016, and 95 per cent by the end of 2017.

Ms Kadum said she wanted to credit teams in the A&E, Shropdoc and West Midlands Ambulance Service who are "at the heart of a system that isn't working as well as we would want it to".

She said: "It would be easy to think that this is just about Emergency Departments. It isn't. It is about the whole system of urgent and emergency care in our county. Too many people are attending hospital for urgent care, too many are being admitted and too many are spending too long in our hospitals as they face delays out of their control before they can move back home or into care closer to home."

Figures provided by SaTH today show that based on statistics from January last year there has been a 6.72 per cent increase in the number of attendances at A&E, a 7.69 per cent increase in emergency admissions and 12.9 per cent increase in ambulance arrivals.