THE emergency department at the Queen's Medical Centre has seen more people walk through its doors than ever before, new figures reveal.
Health officials have warned that nurses and doctors across the country are having to "run harder just to stand still" as several hospital trusts struggle to hit the Government target of seeing patients within four hours.
In Nottingham, there has been a 2.2 per cent increase in the number of people waiting more than four hours to be treated at the QMC's emergency department over the last year.
Latest figures for 2012-13 show that 11,071 people were not seen within the time. In 2011-12, some 10,831 people waited longer than four hours.
In both financial years the trust managed to see 93.9 per cent of its A&E patients within four hours, which is below its 95 per cent target.
NHS England, the central body responsible for quality of health services, has issued emergency plans instructing hospitals and GPs to take urgent action to tackle problems and bring down waiting times.
A spokesman for NHS England said: "Our A&E departments are seeing increasing numbers of patients, meaning having to run harder just to stand still, and the NHS deserves a great deal of credit because, broadly speaking, it has kept waiting times under control.
"But there is a real need to maintain focus on this key issue for patients. We have made it clear that waiting times will continue to be a priority as we move forward.
"We are taking action to help improve performance. There will be fines where there are delays of 30 minutes or more in ambulance handovers and we have set a minimum standard so no patient should experience long trolley waits."
Over the last three years at the QMC the number of people arriving at the emergency department has increased by around four per cent – from 174,170 in 2010-11 to 181,494 in 2012-13 .
Yesterday, the College of Emergency Medicine published the results of its review into the issue based on feedback from more than half the A&E units in the UK.
It said there were shortages in both middle-grade and senior doctors. It also found that the average consultant headcount for an A&E in England was 7.4 – short of the recommended 10 to 16. At the QMC there are as many as 19 consultants in the A&E department as it is one of the biggest in the country.
Hospital consultants have also written to the college to say their A&E departments are "at the point of a meltdown".
But Dr Demas Esberger, clinical director for acute medicine at the QMC, said this was not the case in Nottingham.
He said: "Our teams in the emergency department do a brilliant job .
"We've seen a year-on-year increase – plus there are surges in attendance on weekends and around Bank Holidays which we can predict and ensure we have adequate staff.
"We've done a lot of work over the last few years to ensure people are treated in a timely way."
