Harrogate MP shocked by waiting times for A&E at Harrogate Hospital
Harrogate’s MP has accused the Government of being “asleep at the wheel” after alarming figures showed that there were 630 waits of 12 hours or longer in Harrogate’s A&Es last month.
NHS England figures also revealed that a worrying 12.20% of waits for people in Harrogate and Knaresborough who attended A&E in December were 12 hours or longer from the time they arrived.
Harrogate and Knaresborough Lib Dem MP Tom Gordon said: “It’s a scandal that these dangerous delays have become normalised here.
"A&Es are at breaking point after years of the previous Conservative government’s shameful neglect and patients are paying the price.
“The new government looks to be asleep at the wheel and has completely failed to get a grip on the winter crisis.
"We now need to see Ministers step up and finally begin to tackle this ongoing disaster."
The MP is now calling on the Health Secretary to come forward with an emergency plan to rescue Harrogate’s A&E from this crisis and protect patients who are suffering as a result of these long and dangerous delays.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has previously said that long waits in A&E are estimated to have contributed to 14,000 deaths in England in 2023.
Tom Gordon MP said: “We need to bring forward an emergency plan to immediately protect patients from the consequences of these long delays.
"This response must include an urgent expansion of the number of hospital beds available in Harrogate and Knaresborough and a pandemic-style emergency recruitment campaign to bring staff out of retirement and back into our local health services workforce.”
NHS England figures for December showed more than 677,000 patients had to wait longer than four hours from arriving in A&E to getting treated, admitted or discharged.
That was 11,000 more than in December 2023.
These long waits could have been anything from four and a half hours to 12 or more.
More than 54,000 people waited in A&E longer than 12 hours, on a trolley or a chair, before a hospital bed could be found.