Statistics from Russells Hall hospital lift the lid on the pressure medics face every day in its emergency department.
In a report for July’s meeting of the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust Board of Directors, chief executive Diane Wake presented shocking data about the demand on the department.
The department was attended by 10,129 people in May 2025 which was an increase of 588 people from the previous month.
There were more than 350 patients at the department on 21 out the 31 days in the month.
From the total number of people treated in the hospital’s emergency department, 3,088 arrived in an ambulance, which was down from the previous month’s figure of 3,122.
Patients arriving by ambulance were likely to face a lengthy wait before they were seen, with just 12 per cent of offloads taking less than an hour.
Waiting times in ambulances at hospitals is a problem at NHS hospitals across the region, not just Russells Hall.
In his report for 2024/25, West Midlands Ambulance Service chief executive, Anthony Marsh, said: “We lost a staggering 380,000 hours of crew time as ambulances waited to offload their patients outside A&E.
“That’s equivalent to taking 86 ambulances off the road and putting them in a car park every day!”
High volumes of ambulance arrivals combined with a high level of patients with severe and complicated conditions meant the hospital did not meet national targets for initial assessment, called triage, of patients.
The national target for triage is that 95 per cent of patients are seen within four hours of arrival; however, in May at Russell’s Hall, the figure was 81 per cent.
The hospital performed better against the national target of 78 per cent of patients attending A&E and being admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours, with a figure of 79 per cent.
The average figure for NHS trusts in England that are comparable to the Dudley Trust for the 78 per cent A&E target is 75.4 per cent.
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