Doctors from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) have claimed that the true picture of A&E waiting times in Wales has been severely under-reported for a decade. The RCEM has said that it has established that thousands of hours are missed from monthly figures. According to senior A&E doctors, the issue has been raised for months. However, the Welsh government has questioned the interpretation of the figures.
The RCEM says it cannot establish “how bad” things are because thousands of patients that are subject to so-called “breach exemptions” were not included in the overall A&E waiting times. Wales is reportedly the only UK nation to do this. Doctors warn that this could mask underlying issues and not give the full picture of the pressure on A&Es.
The Welsh government has previously claimed that A&E waiting times in Wales have “bettered English performance,” but once the missing data is taken into account, this suggests that performance in Wales is worse. FOI responses to the RCEM show that in the first six months of 2020, 38.7% of patients in Wales waited longer than four hours in A&E departments. However, when breach exemptions were included, the figure rose to 50%.
The RCEM is calling on the Welsh government to publish all of the figures as long waits in A&E are directly related to worse patient outcomes. However, the Welsh government refutes the claims
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