Mary Cridge, Head of Hospital Inspection for the South West, said: “It is clear that there has been a significant improvement for patients attending Weston General Hospital during the day time. People are not waiting so long. The Trust has improved its performance against the national standard which requires 95% of patients being treated within four hours.
James Rimmer, Chief Executive of Weston Area Health NHS Trust, said: “This is very good news and reflects the excellent work done by staff at Weston to improve patients’ experience in our emergency department. The whole hospital has changed the way patients are guided and supported through the hospital, we have improved staffing arrangements and reduced waiting and queueing.
We have worked with staff across the community, in primary care and at the CCG to make these changes. It is a good example of partnership working to improve care for patients. We will continue to work with our partners and the CQC to make further improvements.”
These improvements form a good foundation for the Trust as it moves forward as part of a wider programme called Healthy Weston. This is looking at how our existing services can work better together to provide greater joined-up care for patients and how some services could be delivered differently in the future to make this happen.
In relation to urgent and emergency care this includes looking at alternative ways of offering care locally to patients traditionally seen in A&E without the need to admit them via an A&E department, and at the types of urgent and emergency services best provided by Weston or by neighbouring hospitals in Bristol and Taunton.
The temporary overnight closure of the hospital’s A&E department remains in place. No final decisions to make significant permanent changes to the way services are delivered have been taken and won’t be until later in 2019 after a formal public consultation in early 2019.
Patients with life threatening emergencies and injuries, such as a massive stroke, heart attack or major trauma have always gone to larger, more specialist hospitals in Bristol and Taunton for treatment rather than to Weston and this will continue going forward.