Time Spent in NHS Accident and Emergency Departments, December 2011

Statistics on Time Spent in NHS Wales Accident and Emergency Departments include data for Wales for the period beginning December 2010 through to December 2011. The latest release updates the statistics previously released on 29 December 2011.

The key points from the latest release are:

• 89.5 per cent of patients spent less than 4 hours in All Hospital Emergency Care facilities from arrival until admission, transfer or discharge;
• 97.3 per cent of patients spent less than 8 hours in All Hospital Emergency Care facilities from arrival until admission, transfer or discharge; and
• Over the last two years, performance against the targets tended to drop over the winter months and then rise until the end of the summer months. However, it’s too early to say what effect the technical change below will have on the time series.

All figures relating to December 2011 are provisional.

There are some technical changes to A&E reporting, that have been implemented from December 2011, to more closely align the definitions in Wales with those in England around clinical and operational exclusions. See notes section at the end of the release for details of the changes.

As a result of these changes, users should note the following:

• an increase in performance against the targets this month is partially due to the technical changes; and
• data prior to December 2011 will not be directly comparable with data for this month and future months.

Further information

StatsWales website.

Contact

Tel: 029 2080 1268
E-mail: stats.healthinfo@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Next update

23 February 2012