Almost 49,000 people waited more than four hours to be seen by A&E last year – a 152% rise on 2019 figures.
Politicians across the political spectrum are calling for changes to be made.
Reading Liberal Democrats want the government to reverse what it says are £4.7 billion of real-terms cuts to NHS funding – more than the £2.5 billion promised by chancellor Jeremy Hunt in his budget yesterday.
Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for the new Earley & Woodley seat, Tahir Maher said: “Every year A&E delays keep getting worse under this Conservative government as hospitals in our area are starved of the funding they need, despite hard-working and over-stretched front-line workers.
“These appalling delays are leaving often vulnerable and elderly patients in our area waiting for hours on end in overcrowded A&Es.”
Labour candidate Yuan Yang said she was not surprised by the numbers.
“I’m sure we’ve all heard stories from friends who’ve sat with their loved ones in A&E in Reading over the winter period. The last Labour government had A&E waiting times under control: in 2010, only 5% of patients waited more than 4 hours to be seen. But after a decade and a half of Tory austerity, now almost half of patients wait longer than that.
“Ask any nurse or doctor and they’ll tell you that the NHS was on its knees even before the pandemic, when almost a third of patients were waiting over four hours.”
She said Labour would ease pressure on the NHS by creating a National Care System which would double the number of district nurses and train community health visitors to see people at home.
Louise Keane, who will contest the seat for the Green Party, said the figures were the tip of the iceberg, and NHS staff were working hard to provide the best care.
“They are up against the combined challenges of an increasing demand on services with fewer resources to meet the needs of the patients. We all know that all our health and social care resources are exhausted beyond anything we have ever experienced.
“We can’t go on like this and we are desperate for a change of government and an end to the devastation that austerity has brought.”
Reform UK has yet to announce its candidate, but a spokesperson pointed to its website detailing its policies. These include working to eliminate waiting lists within two years, training more staff and buying 3 million healthcare operations.
Conservative candidate Pauline Jorgensen said although waiting times had been high, they have been coming down.
“In January just over 14,500 people attended A&E at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. That was more people than last year and a staggering 2,500 more people than attended in January 2019.
“Despite this significant increase in people seeking treatment most patients were seen within four hours. This is testament to the efforts of staff at the Royal Berkshire Hospital and I’d like to thank them for all their hard work.”
She said to combat this, the government was recruiting more doctors and nurses, and was spending £8 billion over three years to 2025 to tackle a backlog caused partly by the covid pandemic.
“We know the next Government will be either Labour or Conservative. In Labour-run Wales, instead of focusing on driving down waiting times, a quarter of A&E patients who waited for more than four hours were simply removed from official statistics. This hid the fact that A&E performance in Wales under Labour is worse than in England under the Conservatives.”
A spokesperson for the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust confirmed the increase in numbers seeking urgent care, and asked readers to seek alternatives if possible.
“Our Emergency Department has seen a significant rise in attendances over the last few years. While there are several measures we’ve put in place as a trust to meet increasing demand, we know a significant proportion of patients coming to the Emergency Department could be treated elsewhere.
“The Emergency Department should only be used for life-threatening emergencies such as stroke and heart attacks, so to help ensure our teams can prioritise patients with the greatest clinical need then please consider alternative options where appropriate, such as: NHS 111, Reading’s Urgent Care Centre in Broad Street Mall which is open from 8am to 8pm 365 days a year, or your local Pharmacy which can now treat many common conditions such as sinusitis and shingles without needing to see a GP.”
