Matt Hancock suggests 4 hour A&E wait target could be scrapped

The four-hour A&E waiting time target could be scrapped after the NHS in England recorded its worst figure on record.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said ‘targets have to be clinically appropriate’

Matt Hancock said on Wednesday that performance must be “judged by the right targets” after official data showed only 81.4% of emergency patients were seen within four hours in November.

This was the worst performance ever against the target that 95% of A&E patients should be seen and treated, discharged or admitted to hospital within that timescale.

NHS England was already piloting new targets so patients with the most serious conditions receive treatment within an hour while others with more minor complaints wait longer.

Mr Hancock suggested the trials could become permanent across the country when he was questioned about the NHS’s performance under the Tories.

“We will be judged by the right targets,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live. “Targets have to be clinically appropriate.”

He continued: “The four-hour target in A&E – which is often taken as the top way of measuring what’s going on in hospitals – the problem with that target is that, increasingly, people can be treated on the day and able to go home.

“That is much better for the patient and also better for the NHS, and yet the way that’s counted in the target doesn’t work.”

The NHS England figures also showed that more people than ever are on waiting lists for treatment.

Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said: “Changing the A&E target won’t magic away the problems in our overcrowded hospitals, with patients left on trolleys in corridors for hours and hours.

“Any review of targets must be transparent and based on watertight clinical evidence, otherwise patients will think Matt Hancock is trying to move the goalposts to avoid scrutiny of the Government’s record.

“After years of austerity under the Tories, the Government’s first priority must be to give the NHS the funding and staff it needs to end the waiting time crisis.”

NHS England faced allegations of trying to abandon key targets because they cannot be met when pilots were announced in March.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine warned that scrapping the four-hour target, which has not been met since July 2015, would have a “a near-catastrophic impact on patient safety”.