HOSPITAL staff in Worcestershire are failing to meet key targets, according to the latest report.

Worcestershire hospitals failed to meet the target for A&E waiting times in both September and October, according to a report discussed at a board meeting of the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

The Government says 98 per cent of patients should be seen, treated or discharged from A&E within four hours.

The figure was 96 per cent for September and 97 per cent for October at A&Es at Worcestershire Royal Hospital and the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch.

Slashing A&E waiting times are one of the key targets which the trust needs to become a foundation trust.

On Saturday your Worcester News revealed that patients were having to wait in the back of ambulances or on stretchers in hospital corridors because of delays admitting them to A&E.

The report also suggests that Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is failing to keep up with complaints. The trust is supposed to respond to 95 per cent of complaints within 20 days but has not hit this target for the last five months.

In September the trust responded to only 69 per cent of complaints within the time frame and 75 per cent in October.

But Helen Blanchard, director of nursing and midwifery, said improved procedures meant health chiefs were meeting face-to-face with more than double the patients as last year who had grievances against a hospital or its staff.

“It’s often regrettable we can’t change a patient’s experience but we can pursue improved practice,” she said.

Harry Turner, one of the trust’s non-executive directors, said more needed to be done to prevent complaints happening in the first place.

He said: “When you get a complaint you’re dealing with something that has already happened. The issue here is to stop the original complaints.

“We have got to go back to the source and stop them happening through training or change of process. We have got to stop focusing on responses. The damage is already done. You can’t fix the damage it does with a quality response.”

Other missed targets included cancer treatment times – a hospital consultant is expected to see a cancer patient within two weeks of referral in 98 per cent of cases.

But at Worcestershire hospitals the trust managed to hit this 93 per cent of the time in October, 81 per cent in September and 95 per cent in August.

Hospitals are expected to cancel no more than 0.8 per cent of operations but this rose to 2.5 per cent at Worcestershire hospitals in September, although the situation improved in October when 0.89 per cent were cancelled.

The norovirus outbreak led to an increased number of cancelled operations in September.

However, the trust does have action plans in place to improve the situation, including two senior care managers to help staff meet the A&E target.

Superbugs: We're on course to meet our targets

HEALTH bosses say they are still on course to meet their target on hospital superbugs.

There have been eight cases of MRSA in county hospitals since April.

The target is to have fewer than 15 cases in 2008/09 at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester, Kidderminster Hospital and the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch.

There were four cases in September and one in October according to a report produced to the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust board.

The trust only records cases of MRSA as “hospital-acquired infections” if they are diagnosed after 48 hours of a patient’s admission.

Otherwise the trust assumes the patient already had MRSA when they came into the hospital.

The report also said there had been two C.difficile deaths in October.

Overall, there were 14 cases of C.difficile in the three acute hospitals and across the community hospitals in October, well within the target of fewer than 26 cases per month.

Hospitals have now returned to normal after the norovirus outbreak which caused diarrhoea and vomiting on 29 wards across the three sites and led to cancelled operations.

Watchdog the Healthcare Commission made an unannounced visit to trust hospitals in September to examine infection control procedures.

Helen Blanchard, director of infection prevention and control, said overall compliance with infection control policies and general hygiene was good but the commission had recommended some improvements, including the need for closer communication between infection control teams and other staff.

The trust was also criticised for storing patient equipment in the same storage area as clean linen and for wrong use of clinical and non-clinical waste bins.

The trust has three months to act on the recommendations.