North Devon hospital’s A&E waits ‘significantly off’ national target, trust says
The trust's graph shows the national target for 2026/27 is for 82 per cent of Emergency Department patients to be seen within four hours, but North Devon District Hospital has been below the target throughout the period it covers, which begins in April 2025.
Waiting times in the Emergency Department at North Devon District Hospital (NDDH) are “significantly off the national target”, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has said.
In an update published on its website, Phil Luke, the organisation’s interim chief operating officer, said demand on services was increasing and “too many of our patients are waiting too long”.
The trust’s graph shows the national target for 2026/27 is for 82 per cent of Emergency Department patients to be seen within four hours. It shows that around 53 per cent of patients at NDDH were seen within that time in September. The graph shows the department has been below the target throughout the period it covers, which begins in April 2025. The target in 2025/26 was 78 per cent.
Across Royal Devon’s Emergency Departments, 118,340 patients were seen between April and September, according to the Trust’s figures. That compares with 108,554 in the same months last year, a 9 per cent rise in demand, or 54 more patients a day.
Exeter also below target
The graph shows performance at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital (RD&E) has also fallen in recent months, to around 67 per cent in September, against the same 82 per cent target.
“We cannot keep doing the same things”
Mr Luke said the key factors were increasing demand and difficulty discharging medically fit patients from hospital, which reduces the capacity available for new arrivals at the Emergency Department.
He said staff were working harder than ever, but added: “In order to improve waiting times for patients we cannot keep doing the same things we have been doing – we need to do things differently.”
Royal Devon said its urgent care plan aims to improve waiting times, reduce overcrowding and make sure patients receive the right care as quickly as possible. It said the projects would take time to deliver results, and that the way patients experience care “may look different too”.
What Royal Devon says it is doing
The measures it highlighted include:
- Same Day Emergency Care at NDDH. Royal Devon said construction of an expansion began in October. Through the service, patients are assessed, diagnosed and treated and, where possible, go home on the same day without an overnight stay. It expects the expanded service to help 5,000 patients a year across the organisation avoid an admission once the NDDH expansion is in place.
- Single Point of Access. Royal Devon is expanding this urgent care service, a team of doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, therapists and GPs who provide clinical advice and coordinate referrals from GPs, ambulance services and community teams, to cover northern Devon as well as eastern Devon.
- Hospital outreach team. It is launching a new team of nurses and GPs in northern Devon to provide medical care at home, with a focus on avoiding admission.
- Other measures. These include voice technology in Emergency Departments, which it said has cut the time clinicians spend writing up notes by 33 per cent, and an Acute Hospital at Home virtual ward with 110 beds.
Royal Devon said a similar expansion of Same Day Emergency Care at the RD&E in January now handles 40 per cent of patients arriving for urgent care there. It said that despite a 6 per cent rise in demand for urgent care at the hospital, admissions had been reduced by 2 per cent overall.
Across its hospitals, it said current Same Day Emergency Care services help patients avoid 3,500 admissions a year.
Better on some measures
Mr Luke said the four-hour target was only one of several measures. He said Royal Devon was in the top 20 nationally for the fewest patients waiting 12 hours or more in its Emergency Departments, and was better than the national average for six-hour waits and for discharging patients within four days or less.
He thanked staff and said the results had been achieved before the urgent care plan has “had the time to make a difference”.
How Royal Devon says you can help
With winter approaching, it urged people to:
- Have flu, Covid-19 and RSV vaccinations if they are eligible
- Use the right service, including pharmacies, minor injuries units and walk-in centres where available, the NHSquicker website and app, and NHS 111 for urgent problems when they are not sure where to go
- Support family and friends in hospital to get home by staying in touch with the ward and helping with discharge arrangements