Huddersfield Royal Infirmary's new A&E now set to open on May 22.

Been quite the saga, this. The A&E was supposed to open in October, but was delayed after the trust had to undertake significant remedial works on the new building.

No journalist wants to rewrite a press release. Lots of freelancers like me left the job partly because of the way it became distorted by the demand for speed and traffic at the expense of almost everything else.

Readers demand impossible; media bosses promise it. Hell follows.

I understand why Lycett does this, but the coverage never includes the situation in newsrooms where the pressure to meet insane traffic targets (which in some places writers are sacked for slipping on) and the complete lack of resources in news leads to an over-reliance on PRs

These trusts will be lauded & rewarded by NHSE for their efforts. In some cases it will be right - they are good performers - but others have done it by pushing people thru UTCs, MIUs etc & actually v poor performance in the main A&E. Cornwall is under 43%, slightly above 1/n

Today's performance figures marked the end of the NHS winter.

After a catastrophic decline coming out of covid, this year saw a small but welcome improvement in many A&Es and ambulance services.

So how was it achieved and what happens next?

Rapid analysis on our weekly

Craig Nikolic Matt Discombe Thanks Craig Nikolic, lots of good progress made by us and by PELC. Still struggling with 12hr waits - some improvement on them but 76% all type leaves a big margin for long waiters in majors.

NHS Eng put ++ pressure on trusts to meet the four-hour A&E target in 76% of cases in March - but they've come up short, with a national avg of 74%

Consequences now for NHS Eng leaders?

story from Matt Discombe
hsj.co.uk/emergency-care…

Full story: A&E target missed despite tough line from NHSE

hsj.co.uk/emergency-care…

This will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone working in emergency care. A few thoughts on why things have changed so much over the last decade (and why ‘attendance numbers’ are not comparable). 🧵

Matt Discombe It’s almost like it’s actually about exit block out of ED onto wards and out of wards back into the community…

Matt Discombe Airedale Hospital Personally think this is great as actually get to find out what happened especially at hospitals that aren't necessarily my regular one