Union bosses call for A&E wait time improvements at West Midlands hospitals
Union bosses in the West Midlands have called for A&E improvements after hospitals fared badly in the latest waiting time figures.
The region was shown to have two of the five worst-performing hospital trusts in England for the first three months of this year.
Walsall Manor Hospital saw just 77 per cent of patients within the four-hour target time, while University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust, which runs County Hospital in Stafford, registered the lowest figure in England with just 63 per cent of patients seen in time.
Only Russells Hall met the NHS 95 per cent target in the Black Country and Staffordshire.
Ravi Subramanian, West Midlands regional secretary for UNISON, said: "Week in week out, for half a year now, the waiting times target has been missed.
"It's bad enough that some sick and injured people were having to wait for more than four hours in the depths of winter – a time when demand on the NHS was at its peak.
"But for that still to be the case now that spring is here shows just how stretched A&E departments have become.
"The NHS, its patients and its staff need and deserve better."
