Time Spent in Northern Ireland Accident and Emergency Departments: February 2010

This release is the twenty-fourth of a monthly series and presents information on the time spent inAccident and Emergency (A&E) at Health and Social Care Trusts within Northern Ireland. This release reports on Trust performance across A&E Departments for the month of February, 2010.

Background

The Priorities for Action (PfA) target for Northern Ireland for 2009-10 requires that, "from April 2009, 95% of patients attending any A&E department should be either treated and discharged home, or admitted within four hours of their arrival in the department. In addition, no patient should wait longer than 12 hours in A&E.

Overall results for February 

At Northern Ireland level, 82.1% of patients were either treated and discharged or admitted within four hours of their arrival in the department. 541 patients waited longer than 12 hours across all of the Trusts, out of a total of 51,131 attendances in February. This is in comparison to January 2010, where 80.4% of patients were either treated and discharged or admitted within four hours of their arrival and 825 patients waited longer than 12 hours across all the Trusts out of a total of 55,032 attendances.