‘A STEADY improvement’ has been announced by the local health trust in its efforts to hit the key benchmark performance targets.
A&E waiting times, non-emergency referral to treatment times and cancer waiting times have all fallen below government target levels, board members of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust heard on Wednesday.
However chief operations officer Rab McEwan said there had been a steady improvement in A&E waiting times and that they expected to hit the target of 95 per cent of patients being seen, assessed and either discharged or admitted within four hours by the end of October.
On the issue of cancer care the trust, like many across the country, failed three key waiting time targets – patients to receive treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral, the 31 day target between decision to treat and treatment starting, and patients to attend outpatients within two weeks of a doctor’s referral.
But Mr McEwan pointed out that with the latter, in 50 per cent of cases these were breached by the patient choosing to do so themselves.
Nevertheless the trust has pledged to hit all three targets by the end of this month, June.
The one cancer treatment target it did hit was the two week breast symptomatic standard.
The board also heard trust was facing a ‘significant challenge’ in its efforts to tackle the 18 week referral to treatment time for non-emergency cases with one patient waiting over 52 weeks for treatment for varicose veins.
Mr McEwan said the patient’s operation had now been scheduled for July.
