OUT of hours care is to be extended at York Hospital's accident and emergency unit.

York Hospital Trust is looking to employ a new consultant covering A&E admissions until 10pm for up to three nights a week.

Currently, the department's four consultants work a shift rota, and go on call after they go home at 7pm on a weekday and at 3pm at weekends.

When there are no consultants on the ward senior doctors are left in charge.

NHS bosses hope the move will help reduce waiting times and provide a greater degree of reassurance to patients.

Ideally, the A&E service needs to increase the number of consultants it employs to eight, and is looking to push the number up to six over the next two years.

The trust plans to shell out £95,000 on the new post, to cover wages and associated costs.

There are a number of reasons why the trust wanted to employ more consultants, including the growing workload in the department, both in and out of normal hours.

The new consultant will also help provide extra supervision and training of increasing numbers of junior medical and nursing staff.

In the past two years, the department has worked hard to help the trust meet its targets, despite the number of cases rising from 14,559 for the first three months of 2004 to 14,913 for the same period this year - a rise of more than two per cent.

It is thought some of the additional workload is associated with the new GP out-of-hours arrangements, and also with the public perception that A&E is readily accessible.

The trust is currently doing well against the four-hour waiting time targets, with around 98 per cent of patients accessed or discharged within that time.

On the rare occasions that it is longer than four hours, these cases tend to occur after 7pm or at the weekend, and it is hoped the presence of a new consultant will help with that.

Updated: 11:14 Friday, May 27, 2005