North London A&E wait times worse than rest of the country

According to a BBC analysis of the data, only two north London hospitals had patients waiting longer than the target time of four hours in A&E at rates below the England average.

Nationwide, 28% of patients had to wait longer than four hours.

The Whittington Hospital in Islington, University College Hospital in Camden, Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead and North Middlesex University Hospital in Tottenham all performed worse than the national average.

The Whittington Hospital was the worst-performing in north London, as more than a third of 8,309 arrivals (36%), waited for longer than four hours.

At Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, 27% of 25,993 arrivals waited for longer than four hours.

Homerton Hospital in Hackney had one of the best records, with just 17% of 9,854 arrivals at the hospital’s A&E department waiting longer than the NHS target time.

Within the NHS, the operational standard is that at least 95% of patients attending A&E should be discharged within four hours.

Nationwide, the number of people waiting more than 12 hours in A&E departments, from a decision to admit to actually being admitted, has dropped by more than a fifth since December.

A&E waiting times have soared since the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020 (Image: PA Media)

The number of patients attending A&E departments in England fell in January amid industrial action across the health service.

A total of 2 million people attended emergency departments in January, down from a record of 2.3 million in December.

A spokesperson for Whittington Health NHS Trust said: "Our staff are doing everything we can to treat everyone as quickly and safely as possible, but we apologise to anyone who has to wait for a long time."

A spokesperson for Homerton Healthcare said: "Homerton Healthcare continues to perform well in dealing with both A&E waits and waiting times for elective surgery when compared to the vast majority of NHS trusts across the country.

"The performance is mainly due to the outstanding efforts of all our staff across the Trust and the active support of primary care and local authority colleagues."

A spokesperson for Royal Free London said: "We have taken a number of measures to try to reduce waiting times, including opening an additional short-stay ward to create more capacity within our hospitals."

A UCLH spokesperson said: “Despite this being one of the busiest winters for the NHS on record UCLH has some of the best ambulance handover waiting times in London and the majority of patients were seen within four hours at the Emergency Department in line with the national averages.”

Shola Adegoroye, chief operating officer at North Mid, said:  “We have been working with our partners across north central London to plan for winter and are implementing our comprehensive winter plan. 

"Our staff are working above and beyond in challenging circumstances, and I would like to put on record my thanks to every member of Team North Mid for their ongoing dedication." 

A spokesperson for the NHS in London, said: “There is no doubt that hospitals in London have experienced significant demand for emergency care this winter as NHS staff continue to work flat-out to deliver the best care for patients.    

“As part of extensive winter preparations, we have introduced more beds and streamlined discharges with social care colleagues to manage increased demand and will build on that with the new plan to recover urgent and emergency care, launched at the end of last month.”