Pain relief in A&E ‘takes too long’
Children and elderly people are waiting too long for pain relief for broken bones when they arrive in accident and emergency departments, a new report says today.
The Healthcare Commission finds just 53 per cent of children who are in moderate or severe pain because of a broken elbow or wrist receive analgesia within an hour of arrival.
In eight A&E departments, four in five children had to wait longer than an hour. The British Association of Emergency Medicine (BAEM) recommends a maximum waiting time of 20 minutes.
The health watchdog also finds that 58 per cent of patients with hip fractures – most of them elderly – had to wait longer than an hour, compared to a BAEM recommended time of 20 minutes.
However, the report concludes that the majority of patients are happy with the overall standards of emergency care in the NHS, with 71 per cent rating it excellent or very good, although this varies between trusts from 85 per cent to 39 per cent.
And it cites recent star ratings showing all NHS acute trusts were meeting the target of admitting or discharging 90 per cent of patients within four hours, although many are struggling to meet the government’s new target of 100 per cent of patients.
Healthcare commission chief executive Anna Walker said: “A&E departments have overall made great strides in improving services, in particular on waiting times which are very important to patients.
“A&E departments now have to go the extra mile if they are to deliver the care that patients need and that means focusing on quality as well as waiting.”
She said today’s report highlights “serious variations” in the quality of care and urged trusts to make monitoring this a core part of the day to day management of units.
The new annual ‘health check’ that will replace star ratings from next year is designed to monitor these standards, looking at in particular at whether patients are treated with sufficient respect and are looked after safely.
