September 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. 

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 September this figure remained within the median time of 15 minutes. 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 September there were 11147 emergency attendances at St Mary’s Hospital. Of these patients, 97.69 per cent were seen and discharged or admitted within four hours. 

The Trust is reviewing our reattendance data to understand why patients might return to our emergency departments within seven days and we are currently working with our teams and partners in the community to:

• Implement shared care plans for 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 September we are currently validating our reattends data and will publish with October’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 September patient pathway

St Mary's A&E September graph

St Mary's A&E September chart