Fewer patients visited the emergency department at Great Western Hospitals last month – but attendances were higher than over the same period last year, figures reveal.
NHS England numbers show 9,630 patients visited in November. That was a drop of eight per cent on the 10,497 visits recorded during October, but 34 per cent more than the 7,186 patients seen in November last year.
Attendances were lower than before the pandemic – in November 2019, there were 11,465.
Nationally the majority of attendances last month were via major emergency departments with full resuscitation equipment and 24-hour consultant-led care, while 44 per cent were via minor injury units. In England there were two million visits last month, 37 per cent more than the 1.5 million seen during November 2020.
At the GWH in November there were 530 booked appointments and 78 per cent of arrivals were seen within four hours, against an NHS target of 95 per cent, 473 patients waited longer than four hours for treatment following a decision to admit and of those, 45 were delayed by more than 12 hours.
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