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Sept 2022
Harrogate hospital officials 'confident' A&E streaming can tackle waiting times
Hospital bosses in Harrogate have said they are confident a new streaming service will help tackle waiting times in A&E.
Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust revealed in June that it was to spend £900,000 setting up a service to assess patients at its emergency department.
As part of the plan, those who have a less serious illness or injury will be transferred to another part of the hospital which will have its own designated clinical practitioners.
Officials have now confirmed that the streaming service will be in full operation seven days a week from November this year.
Hospital bosses have so far been running the service four days a week when staff are available.
While there are no formal figures on how many patients the service has seen in that time, the hospital estimates that up to 50 people a day can be triaged through streaming.
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Currently, between 130 and 150 patients attend the hospital’s emergency department daily.
The Stray Ferret asked the hospital whether it was confident that the measure will help to cut down waiting times at A&E.
A spokesperson for Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust said:
Waiting time targets
Latest figures show that Harrogate District Hospital had 5,663 attendances to its emergency department in July 2022.
The national standard for emergency department waiting times is to admit, transfer or discharge 95% of patients within four hours.
According to NHS England figures, 71% of patients were seen within that timeframe at Harrogate hospital.
The move to create an A&E streaming service comes as other hospital trusts across the UK have introduced similar measures.
In 2018, United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust spent £500,000 on expanding Boston Pilgrim Hospital’s emergency unit in order to introduce a streaming service.
At the time, ULHT said it felt there were too many patients attending the emergency department who could be seen by a general practitioner instead.
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