WAITING times at Scarborough Hospital’s Accident and Emergency have failed to hit national targets as it has emerged that some patients have also spent more than 12 hours on trolleys before they were given a bed.

In February and March, just 78 per cent and 79.2 per cent of patients respectively were seen and discharged within four hours; the national target set to NHS trusts is 95 per cent.

Over the same period, 14 people had to wait more than 12 hours for a bed as the hospital experiences increased attendances leading to bed pressures.

The figures were revealed at a meeting of the Scarborough and Ryedale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

Sue Peckitt, the CCG’s associate director of nursing, quality and performance improvement, told the meeting of the organisation’s governing body that all the incidents of 12-hour breaches had been investigated and no harm to the patients had been found – apart from the inconvenience and negative experience that would lead to.

She said the CCG was working with York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Scarborough Hospital, to rectify the issue, with 12-hour trolley breaches through April and May.

She said:: “Although this data is up to March through April and May we have continued to see 12-hour trolley breaches which we are working with the trust on.”

The issues at Scarborough were blamed on a lack of beds and an increase in the numbers of patients.

A report prepared for the CCG board added that “the A&E… department continued to see increases in patient attendances on the Scarborough site as well as bed pressures, with all but four days experiencing bed occupancy of 90%.

“The CCG had 14 12-hour trolley wait breaches during this period, with all

breaches occurring at Scarborough Hospital due to insufficient capacity within the Emergency Department, and a lack of capacity within the inpatient bed base.”

It continued: “Ambulance handovers remain challenging. The numbers of arrivals have continued to increase, whilst increased bed occupancy rates have also led to more ambulances being delayed by over 30 minutes.”

A spokesman for York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Scarborough Hospital, said that its performance for waiting times was improving.

He said: “Despite a 15% rise in attendances to the emergency department at Scarborough Hospital, from December 2018 to March 2019, performance against the Emergency Care Standard was better than the same period last year.

“Ambulance arrivals also increased by 6% when compared to the 2017/18. The trust and wider system partners are working with NHS Improvement ECIST team to develop and improve handover processes to cope with this increased demand for services.”