Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/14540
Title: | Performing or not performing: what’s in a target? |
Authors: | Eatock, JA Cooke, MW Young, TP |
Issue Date: | 2017 |
Citation: | Future Hospital Journal |
Abstract: | This paper analyses how providers have coped with the 4-hour target over the past 7 years. To do this, we use publically available data from NHS digital to track how long patients remain in A&E departments and their “attendance disposal method.” Using this tool, we compared two A&E departments with similar arrival patterns and age profiles and that perform equally well against the target in a specific year. However, these hospitals exhibit very different underlying behaviour. Over 7 years, both exhibit a general increase in length of stay, increasing number of patients being admitted in the 20 minutes preceding the 4-hour target, and rising numbers of patients that breach the target. Despite the two hospitals having similar input profiles there is a 12 percentage point difference in the number of patients who leave the A&E department in the last 20 minutes. This operational information is not visible simply by monitoring the single existing metric. We conclude that the 4-hour target in isolation is an inadequate measure and we reflect on the difference between selecting measures for policy-level review, and for operational management. A link to download the graphs for each A&E in England is available. |
URI: | http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/14540 |
ISSN: | 2055-3331 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Health Sciences Embargoed Research Papers |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
---|---|---|---|---|
FullText.pdf | 451.57 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
Items in BURA are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.