‘A failure to act will put patient safety at risk this winter’ RCEM says, as it urges the Welsh Government to publish a winter plan

23 November 2023

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has again urged the Welsh Government to publish a winter plan, as it warns ‘a failure to act will put patient safety at risk this winter’.

The Emergency Department performance statistics for October 2023, published today (23 November) by the Welsh government show:

• 67,401 people attended major A&Es (Type 1) in October
• Nearly one in seven (14.6%) patients were delayed by 12-hours or more at a major A&Es (equal to 9,821 patients).
• Nearly one in four (23.4%) patients were delayed eight hours or more at a major emergency department (equal to 15,793 patients).
• Overall, 58.2% of patients in major A&Es were admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours from arrival.
  • This means that more than two in five patients waited more than four hours in major A&Es in Wales.

Dr Suresh Pillai, Vice President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Wales, commented:

“Heading into winter, these figures are grim. Significant numbers of patients faced long and dangerous delays in A&Es in October.

“We still have not seen any sign of a winter plan from the Welsh Government.

“The lack of a plan for this winter means Health Boards are unable to prepare for the worst.

“We urgently need to see increases in bed numbers in hospitals, so patients can be admitted can be quickly and effectively, reducing exit block.

“No clinician wants to see patients languishing in overcrowded A&Es or on trolleys in corridors.

“Long waits are harmful to patients and their care, they are distressing, uncomfortable and often undignified.

“We again urge the Welsh government to produce a comprehensive winter plan that focuses on increasing bed numbers.

“A failure to act will put patient safety at risk this winter, stretch burned out A&E staff to their limit and see a repeat of the heart-breaking scenes of queues of ambulances in carparks that we saw last winter.

“Winter is predictably challenging, and we expect it to be met with proportional and necessary measures needed to protect patients and reduce dangerously long delays to emergency care.”

RCEM Wales continues to call on the Welsh government to publish fully transparent and meaningful data – and to either remove the policy of ‘breach exemptions’ or publish the data before the ‘breach exemptions’ are applied.

You can see more data, visualisations and graphs on our website here: www.rcem.ac.uk/data-statistics/