The Buckinghamshire NHS Trust has acknowledged a need to 'improve waiting times and communications' with patients. 

The Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Wycombe Hospital, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Amersham Hospital, Thame Community Hospital and Buckingham Community Hospital, was rated below average for patient waiting times in a recent survey.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published a survey of patients at emergency care units across the UK based on data collected between November 2022 and March 2023.

Questions about people's experiences of their provider's A&E services were sent to over 1,000 people in Buckinghamshire and 316 responses were received. 

Of those surveyed, the patient response generally matched that of other UK trusts in categories including hospital environment and facilities, respect and dignity and care and treatment quality, with scores of 7.8 out of 10, 8.8 out of 10 and 7.7 out of 10 respectively.

However, the trust was scored lower than the average for the availability of information and updates about waiting times at emergency care services including A&E departments, which were rated 1.4 and 1.1 out of 10 by patients.

Bucks Healthcare Trust was also rated above average for patient safety, with a score of 9.7 patients out of 10 saying they did not feel threatened by other patients or visitors at the facilities.

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A spokesperson for the trust said they were aware that there is a need for improvement of communication with patients in emergency departments about anticipated waiting times.

Adding: "In common with other trusts nationally, we continue to experience high demand for our Emergency Department services and our focus is on reducing waiting times for patients in this department.

"We are working to provide appropriate or timely information updates and to improve the systems that relay this information. 

"We have recently extended the hours of our Urgent Treatment Centre at Stoke Mandeville to 24/7 and have opened a state-of-the-art children's emergency facility so children requiring emergency care are seen quickly by the most appropriate team."

The CQC's survey of NHS Trusts across the country found that people's overall experiences of emergency care were worse than in previous years, with answers to all care-related survey questions declining in score from previous years.

17 per cent of patients around the UK said they had waited over four hours to be examined by a practitioner compared to just 4 per cent in 2020. Furthermore, 76 per cent of emergency care patients said they were not told by a health professional how long their waiting times would be.