2,099 patients at Altnagelvin A&E  in need of ‘immediate’ or ‘very urgent’ care

The latest emergency care report for January to March 2023 shows 5,736 people attended the Altnagelvin Emergency Department (ED) in March 2023. This was down slightly from 5,796 attendances at the local A&E in March 2022.

In March of this year Altnagelvin had the fifth busiest ED in the North after Ulster (9,526 attendances), Antrim Area (8,609), Royal Victoria (7,168) and Craigavon (7,096).

The report shows that during March 2023, 36.6 per cent of patients (2099 people) attending Altnagelvin Area were triaged at level 1/2, compared with 19.2 per cent of those attending the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children (RBHSC).

Level 1 refers to patients who require ‘immediate’ treatment within zero minutes. Level 2 refers to patients classed as ‘very urgent’ and should be treated within ten minutes.

Just 48.3 per cent of patients commenced treatment, following triage, within two hours of attending the Altnagelvin ED in March 2023. This was down from 61.3 per cent in March 2022.

The median time spent in A&E from triage to the start of treatment by a medical professional at Altnagelvin was 2 hours 4 minutes in March. The median time for the north as a whole was 1 hour 22 minutes.

Ninety five per cent of attendances at Altnagelvin A&E commenced treatment within 6 hours 42 minutes of being triaged.

The median time spent in A&E for patients who were eventually admitted to the Derry hospital was 18 hours 51 minutes. Ninety five per cent of patients were admitted within 49 hours 25 minutes.