The number of patients waiting for various types of treatment continue to rise in the Western Health and Social Care Trust area, with Emergency Department and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) waiting times providing the most shocking figures.

This was revealed in the most recent Health and Social Care Board (HSCB) performance report, which provides waiting times statistics from across the different Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland.

Providing statistics from April 2018 to December 2019, over a 18 month period the Western Health and Social Care Trust seen a significant rise in the number of patients waiting in the Emergency Department for more than 12 hours.

In April 2018, the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in the Emergency Department was 84, whereas in December 2019 there were 912, an increase of 828 patients over 18 months.

The percentage of patients in the Emergency Department seen within four hours decreased from 74 per cent in April 2018 to 55 per cent in December 2019, a drop of 19 per cent.

In the Western Health and Social Trust’s mental health services, the number of patients waiting more than nine weeks to access Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) has increased from 98 in March 2019 to 317 in December 2019.

In December 2019, of the 317 patients waiting more than nine weeks to access CAHMS, 83 were waiting to access Primary Mental Health Services (Step 2), which are for children and young people who are experiencing mild/moderate mental health difficulties and referrals are normally categorised as routine.

234 of the 317 patients were waiting to access Core CAMHS (Step 3), which is for children and young people who are experiencing significant/complex mental health difficulties. In the report, it states that the Western Health and Social Care Trust has highlighted increasing demand, growth in complex cases and a rise in emergency referrals as contributing to the deteriorating waiting time position. “Capacity has been impacted by staff sickness absence, an inability to recruit to the service and a reduction in voluntary sector capacity. The Trust has a recovery plan in place which includes prioritising recruitment to all vacant and additional posts (including backfill of clinicians who have moved to MDT transition pilot projects), additional clinics and, a contract with Youth Life,” it was noted in the HSCB report.

The number of patients waiting more than nine weeks to access Adult Mental Services has decreased from 704 in March 2019 to 631 in December 2019 but the number of patients waiting more than 13 weeks to access Psychological Therapies services has increased from 508 in March 2019 to 851 in December 2019.

In December 2019, 154 of the 851 patients waiting more than 13 weeks to access Psychological Therapies services were awaiting Children’s Psychology.

Under the blanket of Mental Health Services, the number of patients waiting more than nine weeks to access Dementia services has increased from 87 in March 2019 to 153 in December.

The report noted that the Western Health and Social Care Trust has continued to progress recruitment to vacant posts and as a result, waiting times improved during October and November. There has however been a deterioration in the waiting time position in December.

The number of outpatients and inpatient/daycase patients waiting for treatment has also increased significantly according to the recent statistics.

In the Western Health and Social Care Trust the number of outpatients waiting more than nine weeks for treatment increased from 27,843 in April 2019 to 32,204 in December 2019.

Outpatients waiting more than 52 weeks for treatment increased from 13,585 in April 2019 to 15,574 in December 2019.

The number of inpatient/daycase patients waiting more than 13 weeks for treatment rose from 12,144 in April 2019 to 13,052 in December 2019 and numbers of inpatient/daycase patients waiting more than 52 weeks for treatment increased from 5,478 in April 2019 to 5,816 in December 2019.

In the Western Health and Social Care Trust, almost all urgent breast cancer referrals were seen within 14 days from April 2019 to December 2019, with only a slight drop to 99 per cent in May 2019.

In April 2019, 60 per cent of patients urgently referred with a suspected cancer began their first definitive treatment within 62 days.