October 2011 data

St Mary's Hospital is the major trauma centre for the North West London Trauma network. It also has a dedicated children’s emergency department. It is a type 1 A&E department, with a consultant led 24 hour service with full resuscitation facilities and receives and treats all types of emergencies including those for mental health patients.

Since July 2010 there has been an innovative pilot, in partnership with London Central & West Unscheduled Care Collaborative, providing care and treatment for patients with urgent care needs on site. 

This area continues to offer a high quality service to our patients with almost 80 per cent treated and discharged within two hours and 84 per cent of patients offered pain relief within 30 minutes. 

The Trust has developed an action plan in conjunction with the London Ambulance Service and has already seen an improvement in ‘time to initial assessment’ for patients arriving by ambulance and for October this figure remained within the 15 minute standard. This has also led to a considerable improvement in our ambulance handover times when using the ambulance service electronic handover system.

The A&E team is also focussing on the ‘time to treatment’ and the number of patients who return to the departments within seven days. The ‘time to treatment’ varies according to the condition of the patient and number of patients arriving at the time in the department. Patients are assessed and prioritised according to their health needs. This has shown an increase this month and the teams are working to address this along with the quality of our data. 

For the month of October there were 11,894 emergency attendances at St Mary’s Hospital. Of these patients, 98 per cent were seen and discharged or admitted within four hours. 

The Trust is reviewing our re-attendance data to understand why patients might return to our emergency departments within seven days and we are currently auditing the cases of 100 patients who have re-attended with an aim to:

  • Implement plans for us to share the care of patients who attend frequently when another care provider is more appropriate
  • Improve information for patients with certain conditions so they know what to expect
  • Explore options other than emergency department for patients who are not from the local area

For October we are currently validating our data on patients who re-attend to match with patients who attend the urgent care centre and will publish with November’s figures.

As a Trust we are committed to reviewing the pathway for patients requiring admission to ensure patients are transferred safely and quickly to an appropriate ward.

St Mary's A&E October patient pathway

St Mary's A&E October graph

St Mary's A&E October chart