Emergency Departments across the South East saw an increase in attendances in January as winter pressure continued to hit the NHS at the start of 2024.

Over 330,000 people attended emergency departments across the region in January which was an increase of 14.6% on the previous year. But although attendances were up, patients being treated within four hours, improved from 71.4% in December to 72.9% last month, resulting in more than an additional 13,000 people being seen within the recommended timeframe.

Ambulance services in the South East continued to be busy with 123,957 incidents responded to in January 2024, an increase on previous year of 13.3%.

Category one call (life threatening injuries and illnesses, specifically cardiac arrests) response times were 18 seconds faster than the previous month and for category 2 calls (emergency calls such as stroke patients), the response times improved by two minutes and four seconds.

Vaughan Lewis, NHS England’s Medical Director for the South East, said: Although we saw an increase in people attending emergency departments across the South East, I am pleased to see that the number of people we treated within the four hour standard increased, meaning that people spent less time waiting to be treated in busy emergency departments.

“Across the south east, we continue to see the expansion of urgent treatment centres, minor injury units, community diagnostic centres, same day emergency care services and virtual wards. All of these innovations enable those in need of hospital based emergency care to receive that care promptly in the most appropriate setting in our emergency departments”

He added: “It has been an extremely challenging winter so far with two periods of industrial action, including the longest strike in NHS history last month.”

“We are now looking ahead to next week when we will be planning for another period of five days of industrial action by junior doctors which will again put extra pressure on NHS staff. NHS England recognises the extraordinary dedication and hard work of staff who plan extensively and work tirelessly to ensure patient safety is maintained during periods of strike action and I would like to thank everyone for their continued support in what remains a very challenging time for the NHS.”