MORE patients are being dealt with inside the standard four hours at the Royal Gwent Hospital’s A&E unit, following changes in procedures for early discharges from medical wards.

Coupled with a drive to improve the flow of GP-referred and emergency patients through the hospital system, changes have resulted in increased discharges and reduced lengths of stay.

In the hospital’s emergency department there have been fewer patients having to wait in corridors, and a fall in the number of waits of more than 12 hours.

Fewer patients have been held in ambulances outside, and ambulance-A&E handover times have improved.

Figures for August and September reveal that, respectively, 77.8 per cent and 79.5 per cent of patients in the Royal Gwent’s A&E unit were dealt with inside four hours, the highest percentages for more than a year, and several percentage points above those for most of the previous 12 months.

The target for A&E units in Wales is that a minimum 95 per cent of patients should be dealt with inside four hours, so despite the improvements at the Royal Gwent, there remains much to do - and this is a Wales-wide problem, as the target has not been met anywhere for many years.

Another consequence of improvements during August and September has been a reduction in the numbers of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E in Gwent.

No-one should have to wait that long so again, much remains to be done, but the figures for these two months - 258 and 323 - were the lowest for some time.

These figures include those for the A&E unit at Nevill Hall Hospital too, but the reduction has been driven by the Royal Gwent unit, which accounts for much the majority of the total amount.

System changes at the Royal Gwent - focused initially on its medical assessment unit - have been implemented as part of a wider programme that aims to embed new models of working proposed for the Grange University Hospital (formerly known as the Specialist and Critical Care Centre), ahead of its opening in 2020/21.

Nevill Hall’s emergency and assessment departments are being redesigned too, with a view to building on the recent improvements in performance.