THE number of patients spending more than four hours in the emergency department of Royal Cornwall Hospital is increasing leading to the trust missing its annual targets.
Under guidelines 95 per cent of patients should spend no longer than four hours in the emergency department but in March that dropped to 87.14 per cent.
That was the lowest level achieved for the past three years.
This came after a figure of 88.1 per cent was recorded for February, 94.18 per cent in January and 93.2 per cent in December.
As a result RCHT missed its target for the last quarter of 2012-13 and also failed to achieve the 95 per cent target for the entire year.
Performance for the year was 93.43 per cent which meant that of the 73,007 patients seen at the emergency departments at Treliske and West Cornwall Hospital during 2012-13 a total of 4,791 spent more than four hours in the department.
The trust had taken action in April 2012 after missing the target then including the introduction of a "deep dive" for the RCHT board into performance data and analysis so they could understand and address the causes. A report going before the board this week suggested that the main reason for the failure to meet the target was a lack of medical bed capacity meaning that patients could not be moved out of the emergency department.
The report also highlighted that RCHT has seen an increase in discharge delays over the past two years.
During 2012-13 there was, on average, 24 delays a day.
However delays were particularly high in January – the worst month on delayed transfers of care since April 2009 – with an average of 35 delays a day and a maximum of 48.
The report states that while it improved slightly in March there were still on average 25 a day and a high of 44.
The report also covers the high outbreak of norovirus in February which led to the hospital having to close wards.
The peak number of cases was 18, significantly higher than at any other time of the year.
The outbreak affected staff as well as patients, putting additional strain on services.
