The Royal rumbled – the worst Accident and Emergency department in the UK for waiting times keeps getting worse

Previously, I had written on how the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast had the worst waiting times in the UK in September 2014, with 64.5% of cases being dealt with within four hours, against a target of 95%. Since this analysis, data has now been published showing performance up to February 2015. For anyone who may need emergency care (i.e. everybody), the data does not make for encouraging reading. In February 2015, only 52.5% of those presenting themselves to A&E …

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Causes and cures for the Accident and Emergency crisis: a data perspective

There have been a number of excellent pieces on Slugger recently regarding Northern Ireland’s A&E crisis. A lot of suggestions have been put forward for how to tackle the crisis, and a lot of reasons have been put forward for why performance, in particular against the four hour waiting time target, has deteriorated in recent years. I have been sourcing data to see how some of these ideas stack up. Too many bureaucrats and not enough doctors It has been …

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Crisis? What Crisis?

As the NHS goes into meltdown once again both locally and nationally we asked NHS lobbyist and regular thorn in the side of Health Ministers and officials past and present HUGH McCLOY to give us his personal view on the latest crisis in A&E. You can follow Hugh on Twitter here and keep up to date with his campaign for the return of Acute services to the Mid Ulster Hospital here. This Winter Crisis of 2015 is not the same …

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Cartoon – Hear Nesbitt roar!

  <div data-boourl=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/1928083-uup-leader-mike-nesbitt-says-poots-must-go-bbcnolan/embed?eid=AQAAAKBnA1OTax0A” ><a href=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/1928083-uup-leader-mike-nesbitt-says-poots-must-go-bbcnolan”>listen to ‘UUP leader Mike Nesbitt says &quot;Poots must go&quot; #BBCNolan’ on Audioboo</a></div><script type=”text/javascript”>(function() { var po = document.createElement(“script”); po.type = “text/javascript”; po.async = true; po.src = “https://d15mj6e6qmt1na.cloudfront.net/assets/embed.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();</script> Not like we haven’t heard it before.       Brian SpencerBrian is a writer, artist, political cartoonist and legal blogger. Actively tweeting from @brianjohnspencr. More information here: http://www.brianjohnspencer.com/ www.brianjohnspencer.com/

The solution to the A+E problems lies outside A+E

The travails of the NI NHS are back in the news and specifically the problem of A+E: except it is not actually all an A+E problem. The main problem is the long waits in A+E of 12 hours or more. It must be understood that these people are not a waiting initial assessment and treatment but rather are awaiting admission to a ward: their A+E stay and treatment should have already finished. These people are entirely inappropriately being treated in …

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