Swindon's A&E is the best in the country (From Swindon Advertiser)

Swindon's A&E is the best in the country

11:20am Thursday 3rd July 2008

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THE accident and emergency department at the Great Western Hospital is officially the most efficient in the country.

This was the verdict of the Strategic Health Authority on figures for the last three months.

To meet Government targets hospitals must deal with 98 per cent of emergency patients within four hours.

GWH has been constantly above this and, for the last three months, 99.74 per cent of patients have been seen within four hours.

Of those 60 per cent are seen in under two hours and, over several weeks, the hospital had no cases waiting over the time.

Dr Alf Troughton, the medical director of the hospital, said: "This improvement is down to Dr Kash Aujla, consultant in the emergency department, and all his staff who have worked incredibly hard to transform the quality of treatment."

The hospital made the leap from the 124th ranking to the top spot in just a year.

The waiting figures are based on when a patient has passed through the emergency system, meaning they have been assessed, treated and admitted as an in-patient or treated and sent home.

On an average week the department will deal with about 1,200 patients a week.

Half of those will be suffering from minor injuries and the other half will be people who come in on stretchers with major injuries.

Dr Aujla said: "It's been hard work to get to this level and now our task is to maintain this performance."

Hospital emergency departments are dependent on many factors to make these figures, such as delayed transfers of care within the hospital - patients who are in hospital but are unable to leave because outside care has not been made available.

Dr Troughton added: "This is something the A and E department are set, but I think to do it the whole hospital has to work together - we have to have to have an empty bed on the ward for a patient to be admitted."

Dr Troughton said one factor in their success was that surgeons and specialists were much quicker at coming to patients down in A and E, partly because of progress chasers employed to ensure the department keeps to time.

The hospital has also re-examined its processes to see if it could be more efficient and increase the number of nurses in the department.

"I think people have genuinely worked much harder everybody has seen the importance of it and has pulled out all the stops," said Dr Troughton.

"If you thought you had to wait for six hours you'd be pretty miserable, so to know it will be done within four hours is better.

"It's a sensible target that most members of the public would agree was important."

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