THE number of people waiting for prolonged periods at A&E in hospitals run by the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust has significantly worsened in the past year.

Figures have revealed the percentage of patients waiting four hours or less in emergency departments fell from 69.1 per cent in August 2021 to 58.4 per cent in August 2022.

In addition, the number of patients spending more than 12 hours waiting to be admitted increased between those two dates – from one in August 2021 to six in August 2022.

Nationally there were 1,304,378 attendances at major emergency departments of which 28,756 patients were delayed for 12 hours or more from decision to admit to admission. This is the second highest number of 12-hour waits on record, just 561 short of the previous record in July 2022.

Four-hour performance at major emergency departments was 58 per cent, the second worst four-hour performance on record.

President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Katherine Henderson said: “The data is stark. We are worried about the coming winter.

“Too many patients are waiting too long. We know long waits contribute to patient harm.

“Staff are exhausted, overwhelmed and in the midst of the worst crisis the NHS has ever faced.

“Widespread shortfalls of staff across all grades and departments mean health care workers are spread increasingly thinly and more prone to burnout – there are currently around 130,000 vacancies in the NHS almost ten per cent of its workforce.”

Neill Moloney, deputy chief executive at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Keeping our promises to patients and reducing the amount of time they spend in A&E is important to us.

“Our teams assess and prioritise each patient clinically, so those with the most urgent needs are seen first, but this does mean some people have waited longer than we’d have liked them to.

“We continue to work closely with teams across the health and social care sector to make sure only those patients who really need to be in hospital are those who are in a hospital bed. That way we can make sure we treat and admit or discharge people from A&E as quickly and safely as possible.”