Nearly half of patients seeking A&E care at the Somerset Trust waited longer than four hours to be dealt with last month, figures show.

NHS guidance states that 95% of patients attending accident and emergency departments should be admitted to hospital, transferred elsewhere or discharged within four hours.

But Somerset NHS Foundation Trust fell well behind that target in November, when just 54% of the 6,530 attendances at type 1 A&E departments were dealt with within four hours, according to figures from NHS England.

Type 1 departments are those which provide major emergency services – with full resuscitation equipment and 24-hour consultant-led care – and account for the majority of attendances nationally.

It means 46% of patients attending major A&E at the Somerset Trust waited longer than four hours to be seen last month, compared to 57% in October, and 44% in November 2021.

Including the 8,432 attendances at other accident and emergency departments, such as minor A&Es and those with single specialties, 79% of A&E patients were seen by the trust within the target time in November.

At Somerset NHS Foundation Trust:

In November:

  • There were two booked appointments, down from four in October
  • 518 patients waited longer than four hours for treatment following a decision to admit – 3% of patients
  • Of those, 33 were delayed by more than 12 hours

Separate NHS Digital data reveals that in October:

  • The median time to treatment was 62 minutes. The median average is used to ensure figures are not skewed by particularly long or short waiting times
  • Around 2% of patients left before being treated