The NHS has failed for the last two months to meet its target of dealing with 95% of A&E patients within four hours, according to official figures that underline the growing pressures on hospitals.
The NHS has missed the target in each of the last nine weeks, with 93.3% of patients being admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours in the most recent week for which data are available – ending on 24 March.
The Department of Health data emerged just after the East of England ambulance service took the unprecedented step of erecting a "major incident tent" in which to treat patients outside the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, to relieve pressure on its A&E unit over the Easter weekend.
The four-hour target covers three types of A&E units: those based at major hospitals, those at specialist hospitals, such as Moorfields eye hospital in London, and minor injury units or urgent care centres.
Major hospitals are under the most intense pressure. Labour highlighted DoH data showing that as a whole hospitals offering consultant-led A&E care, so-called type 1 A&E departments, which treat more than 60% of all emergency patients, have not met the target for 26 consecutive weeks.
In the week ending 24 March, for example, 27,273 of the total of 272,505 patients who sought A&E help – some 10% – were not admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. Type 1 departments have not met the 95% target since mid-September 2012, the figures confirm.
The last Labour government brought in the target in 2002 to end the scandal of patients sometimes waiting many hours to be seen in casualty. They ordered that 98% of patients had to be dealt with in that time but the coalition, which opposes targets it says are not clinically justified, watered that down in 2010 to 95%.
About 14 million patients a year are seen in major A&E units, about 600,000 in specialist units and almost 7 million a year in minor injury units and urgent care centres.
The DoH accused Labour of making misleading claims by focusing on just type 1 units. In fact 96% of patients have been dealt with within the required four hours at all three types of A&E centres since April 2012, the DoH said. A&E centres are seeing 1 million more patients than two years ago and are coping well, it added.
Prof John Appleby, chief economist at the King's Fund health thinktank, said: "Looking at all types of A&E department, the NHS has missed its four-hour target for the last nine weeks, which is slightly worse than previous winters.
"That's a reflection of the time of year, with norovirus more of a problem than it was last year, financial pressures on hospitals meaning some can't get patients out quickly enough to take someone else in and also what some hospital finance directors say is inadequate social care planning in their area."
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said emergency care was under strain. "These figures are yet more proof of a system running at capacity, and patients are suffering as a result. Our members are regularly telling us that pressure on the system is rising while staffing levels fall, and as a result any increase in demand results in unacceptable waits for patients who are already going through a difficult time." Guardian
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