Stockport Labour Group has highlighted figures showing that Stepping Hill Accident and Emergency missed waiting times targets for local patients in 21 of the last 25 weeks.
Whilst NHS England figures for the week ending 17th May showed an improvement at Stepping Hill, with 1,861 attendances and 92 patients waiting for more than 4 hours after arrival for admission, transfer or discharge, at 95.1% the department is still struggling to consistently meet the target.
The Conservative Government, and before it the Lib Dem-Conservative Coalition, has presided over some of the worst figures nationally at Stepping Hill.
Labour Group Health Spokesperson Cllr Tom McGee said:
“Stepping Hill has not met the 4 hour target for 21 of the 25 weeks since the 23rd November last year. Almost 1 in 5 patients waited for more than 4 hours in the first 3 months of this year.
“The Government and NHS Foundation Trust should be taking urgent action to improve performance. Labour introduced the target at the end of 2004 to ensure that our NHS treated at least 98% of patients within four hours.
“The crisis is clear to patients and hard-working NHS staff, even though the Tories have tried to hide it, lowering the target to 95% when they came to power in 2010. These figures show that the NHS is only safe in Labour’s hands.”
Across England the NHS missed the target overall for the whole of 2014-15, with only 93.6% of patients seen within four hours.
Labour has consistently argued for a more robust plan to reduce the numbers of patients presenting at Stepping Hill with non-urgent conditions. These have increased since the heavily-used NHS Walk-In Centre closed in September 2010.
The Centre, located on the A6 in Stockport, opened in 2009 as part of Labour’s National Equitable Access to Primary Care scheme and treated three times the anticipated number of patients during its year in operation.
Stepping Hill Hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department serves 320,000 people across Stockport, High Peak and some parts of East Cheshire.