Kettering General Hospital ranked seventh across whole of England for worst waiting times

A Northamptonshire hospital has placed in the top ten A&E units in England with the worst waiting times for patients, with nearly 50 per cent of people waiting more than four hours to be treated.

Kettering General Hospital (KGH) has the highest number of patients waiting long periods for treatment in the county, according to NHS data.

It was also ranked as having the seventh-worst wait times across all NHS Trusts in England from October to December last year.

A spokesman for KGH has said the A&E department has focused more on four-hour transit times over the past three months and expects to see improvement.

They also said the hospital rebuild will incorporate a new Urgent Care Centre to help address the county’s demand.

NHS operational standards set in 2010 state that at least 95 per cent of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

In December 2022, England implemented an intermediate minimum standard, where at least 76 per cent of A&E attendances should be seen within this timeframe, until March 2024.

More than 48 per cent of patients visiting A&E in KGH waited more than four hours to receive urgent care, well above the national standard.

This saw 14,000 people waiting over the NHS targeted times across the last three months of 2023 alone.

In comparison to national figures, 30 per cent of all hospital attendees across England were waiting more than the specified four hours in that same period.

According to an A&E Waiting Time Report created by Online Marketing Surgery and ePower Trucks, the top ten NHS England Hospitals with the highest waiting times were:

1. Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust- 55.3 per cent
2. Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust- 54.3 per cent
3. Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, Harlow- 50.5 per cent
4. Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, West Yorkshire- 49.2 per cent
5. The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust- 49 per cent
6. Countess Of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust- 48.7 per cent
7. Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust- 48.6 per cent
8. East Cheshire NHS Trust- 48 per cent
9. University Hopsitals Plymouth NHS Trust- 46.6 per cent
10. University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust- 45.8 per cent

Northamptonshire has one of the fastest growing populations in England and also has a proportionally rapidly growing elderly population.

It is nationally recognised that both KGH and NGH’s A&E departments are under significant pressure to cope with continually growing demand.

Despite having the most A&E attendances in the county at more than 35,000, Northampton General Hospital outperformed Kettering with 38 per cent of people waiting for four hours or more in the department.

Corby Urgent Care - which provides urgent medical help for non-life-threatening emergencies - represented the best waiting times in Northamptonshire.

Despite taking on a total of 27,035 patients, which was only 1,800 less than KGH, only 228 people (0.8 per cent) had to wait more than four hours.

KGH’s chief operating officer Fay Gordon said: “Our staff work extremely hard to maintain a safe service in A&E and over the last three months we have focused more on four-hour transit times and expect our final quarter figures for the year to be improved.

“To cope with rising demand at KGH we have expanded our A&E department several times in recent years while at the same time planning for a major overhaul of our urgent care facilities on the KGH site.

“This has translated into well-advanced plans with the New Hospital Programme to create a new integrated Urgent Care Centre on the KGH site to help address the issue as part of our major planned hospital rebuild.”