NHS emergency care sees worst month on record in February 2018

NHS England has experienced its worst month on record in terms of waiting times for emergency care.

In February 2018, only 85 percent of patients were seen, assessed or discharged within four hours in England's hospitals, the worst performance since the target of seeing 95 percent patients within four hours was introduced 14 years ago.

The previous worst figure of 85.1 percent was recorded in December, with the latest data meaning that the three worst performances on this metric have been recorded in the last three months.

More than 1.8 million people attended accident and emergency departments during February, up five percent on the same month last year. This reflects the recent cold weather that has placed additional pressure on the NHS.

Efforts to deal with this demand led to 22,800 elective and non-urgent operations and procedures being postponed, freeing up 1,400 beds.

Dr Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: "Performance that once would have been regarded as utterly unacceptable has now become normal, and things are seemingly only getting worse for patients."

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