A HEALTH watchdog has said progress is being made to improve emergency care in East Lancashire.

But the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has highlighted nine areas of concern in the area’s hospitals where more work is needed.

Yesterday members of the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust met to discuss its response to a summer inspection carried out by independent clinic-ians and members of the commission.

The CQC wrote to the trust in April this year announcing it was to begin a review of its emergency care services, looking at mortality rates, the trust's ability to meet the demand for emer-gency admissions and concerns about delays and patient care.

The nine areas of concern which the inspection identified included ensuring that patients’ experiences at Royal Blackburn Hospital were improved and that patients were treated in the A&E when possible.

The commission called for reviews of the urgent care centre at Burnley General Hospital and the location and facility of the Black-burn urgent care centre.

And it asked for impro-vements in the emer-gency department’s medical workforce, its arrangements for chil-dren, its patient flows and govern-ance and a reduction in waiting times for X-ray results.

Lynn Wissett, the deputy chief execu-tive of the trust, said that “consid-erable changes” had been made since April when the review was announced. These included im-provements to patient waiting times in A&E.

She said: “Initial patient experience indications are posit-ive and we have experienced a 25 per cent reduction in the number of patients waiting over four hours.

“We are now focusing on the changes required to ensure sustainable improvements.”

Health chiefs were told that a new 'rapid assessment' process had also led to around 40 to 50 per cent of patients receiving trea-tment in A&E within half an hour of arrival, while 'fast flow wards' have also had a significant impact, with 70 per cent of patients now going home within 48 hours.

And the director of clinical care and governance said that mortality rates had improved from significantly higher than expected last year to significantly lower than expected this year.

A further review is in February 2010.