Four-hour emergency department target returns to hospitals

Royal Bournemouth and Poole hospitals had been part of a national pilot which moved away from reporting the four-hour standard from admission to discharge.

However, a decision has been made nationally to end the pilot and revert back to the established performance assessment.

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Bosses at University Hospitals Dorset (UHD), which runs the two hospitals, said the transition back to the four-hour target system would be “challenging”.

The emergency departments will begin reporting their performance against the standard from Monday, May 15.

Mark Mould, UHD’s chief operating officer, said: “We have always recognised the four-hour standard is really important in the sense of it was clinically developed.

“We know that it links into mortality, patient experience and staff experience, and actually we’re looking forward to going back to the standard and reporting it.

Mark Mould (Image: Newsquest)

“What we are doing at the moment is our organisation hasn’t operated that standard for two years, so we are engaging and talking to the teams about what does going back to the organisational four-hour safety standard – that is what we have termed it – mean to each of them and how do we need to work and operate differently than we did previously.”

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Mr Mould said residents knowing and choosing the most appropriate health service for their needs was important to emergency department performance.

He said pharmacies were taking on a new role moving forward, while GPs in Dorset were doing “incredibly well in really difficult circumstances”.

“It is just choosing well,” Mr Mould said. "We know at times people go through all those routes and ultimately there is no option and people walk into our emergency department.

“We will always see people in clinical priority and that may mean at times people who attend the emergency department, but may not necessarily have an emergency, may need may wait a little bit longer.

“It is done by clinical priority and not by when they arrived at hospital.”