3,700 wait for hospital bed in East Lancashire

12:11pm Tuesday 1st July 2008

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ALMOST 3,700 East Lancashire people were waiting for hospital beds in May, according to new figures published by the Department of Health.

And nearly 8,000 were waiting for appointments with outpatient clinics.

But the figures put East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs both the Royal Blackburn Hospital and Burnley General Hospital, firmly in the “average” bracket when compared to hospitals throughout the country.

Government targets say no patient should wait more than 18 weeks from GP referral to hospital treatment, whether as an in-patient or out-patient.

Supplementary targets say hospitals should aim to see all out-patients within eight weeks - 13 at the most, and that in-patients should have a bed within 13 weeks, or 26 weeks at the most.

In May, 2,092 in-patients and 7,944 out-patients had been waiting less than four weeks, but 287 out-patients had been waiting longer than eight weeks to be seen.

A further 15 out-patients had waited more than 13 weeks.

For in-patients, 1,428 had been waiting more than 13 weeks, but no-one had waited longer than 21 weeks.

In her latest report into hospital performance, the trust’s director of clinical care and governance Lynn Wissett said: “After success in achieving access targets in 2007/2008, there have been a number of breaches to key stage of treatment milestones during the first month of the year.

“However, this has not adversely impacted on the overall delivery of an 18 week referral-to-treatment target, with the trust delivering above the target milestones in this area.”