A spot check on East Surrey Hospital's A&E described it as "chaotic" despite them meeting government targets.

The check carried out by hospital watchdog East Surrey's Community Health Council on April 28 added some patients had been waiting for more than 12 hours.

But despite record numbers of patients being seen, the hospital met and exceeded a government target of 80 per cent of patients are admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours during a week-long inspection in March.

Sue Dixon, chief officer at the CHC, says the Government figures do not capture the true picture.

"A lot of trusts improved their performance during the week that they were audited for their performance ratings, and the same applies to Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust which runs the hospital.

"It's regrettable that the achievements attained weren't maintained.

"However, this is more about the government policy of targets and how they are presented.

"The Government is saying that nine out of 10 trusts are meeting the targets, yet we know they only measured that week, and they are presenting that as reflecting the over all situation."

A hospital spokesman said staffing levels had increased before the DoH inspection, but that they had since been maintained and were only a part of the elements which come together to impact the statistics.

An East Surrey hospital spokesman said: "We did increase our staffing levels but we've retained them."

"It's our policy at this trust to ensure that the figures given are what they really are.

"We also have our figures audited independently every six months."

New measures to reform emergency care at the hospital are underway, and the hospital anticipates the unit will "go from strength to strength".

However, the hospital faces another challenge: as government targets are squeezed - by December 2004 it is expected no patients will wait longer than four hours in A&E - the number of people coming to A&E, both at East Surrey and nationally, is increasing.

In March and April, the number of patients increased from 3,500 to 3,850.

The spokesman said: "All the A&E departments around the country are saying that numbers coming continue to climb. It used to be the case that there were peaks and troughs but now its just peaks.

"It's impossible to predict how busy we are going to be."

May 29, 2003 09:30