HOSPITALS’ performance against A&E waiting times targets in Wales are worsening almost across the board, with fewer patients being dealt with inside four hours, and more having to wait longer than 12 hours.

Figures for the past three Aprils – the latest has just been published by the Welsh Government – show significant reductions in the percentage of patients being dealt with inside the four-hour standard in all health board areas with acute hospitals, bar one.

Ninety-five per cent of people attending A&E should be dealt with inside four hours, according to the Welsh Government-set target.

But this has not been met for a number of years, and figures for 2014-16 show that achieving it is an increasingly distant prospect.

Last month, the best performance against the four-hour A&E target was the 85 per cent achieved by Cardiff & Vale University Health Board, which was the only one to improve on its April 2015 performance (by 0.6 percentage points). But it was 4.5 percentage points down on its April 2014 performance.

Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in Gwent was among three where performance against that A&E waiting time target over the past three Aprils has fallen by 10 percentage points or more.

Last month, 81.8 per cent of people attending emergency departments in Gwent were dealt with inside four hours, one of the better results in Wales. But this compared with 88.6 per cent in April last year, and 91.8 per cent in April 2014.

Worryingly, this was despite the overall number of emergency department attendances in Gwent last month – 13,145 – being more than 800 fewer than in April 2015 and 435 fewer than in April 2014.

The biggest factor affecting emergency department performance appears was a shift in the types of cases presenting at the hospital "front door".

The proportion of complex cases arriving at A&E, often among the elderly, has risen steeply across Wales in recent years.

The worsening performance is also mirrored across Wales in the numbers of patients waiting more than 12 hours in emergency departments.

Last month there were more than 3,000 such waits across Wales (543 in Gwent), compared with 995 in April 2014 (230 in Gwent).