Hospitals across Yorkshire fail to meet A&E targets amid MP's claims new figures are the '˜tip of the iceberg'

New figures have revealed that around half of all hospital trusts in the county failed to reach the standard of treating 95 per cent of emergency admissions within the target time for December – some missing the benchmark by more than 10 per cent.

Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals were Yorkshire’s worst performers, reaching only 81.37 per cent of patients within four hours, while hospitals in York reached just over 89 per cent within the target time but left over 260 patients waiting for eight hours or more last month.

Trusts have warned that they still face challenges to meet demand and have blamed “extremely high attendances” for the delays. Meanwhile a Yorkshire MP has branded the statistics the “tip of the iceberg” of A&E issues.

High demand for services at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTH) saw it declare working at level five of six of its winter action plan during the week before Christmas – signalling pressures were at a “critical level”.

Overall, hospitals in Leeds were also among those to fail to hit the standard, reaching emergency patients within four hours in 90 per cent of cases, although St James’s Hospital’s busy older people’s wards saw it hit the target in under 84 per cent of cases.

Paula Sherriff, Dewsbury MP and a member of the Government’s Health Select Committee, claims she had a first-hand experience of being told to expect at least a five-and-a-half hour A&E wait in recent weeks.

“It’s a false economy. It costs a lot more to take you in by ambulance,” she said. “But this is what constituents are telling us all the time.”

She branded Hull’s figures as “quite worrying” but said she was not surprised by the findings, which she believes are down to a lack of NHS resource and growing issues like the delayed transfer of patients well enough to go home.

Ms Sherriff added: “They [Government] are desperate and I think it’s the tip of the iceberg. It’s not going to go away and it’s only going to get worse.”

Elsewhere in the region hospitals operated by trusts in North Lincolnshire and Goole also failed to hit the target, known as the Emergency Care Standard.

Trusts in Harrogate, Calderdale and Huddersfield, South Tees and Doncaster met the target, while hospital bosses are yet to publish up-to-date December statistics in Mid Yorkshire, Barnsley and Sheffield. Barnsley failed to meet the standard in November however, reaching just 92.7 per cent of patients in the target time.

Earlier this month Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust declared a “purple alert” warning that Hull Royal Infirmary was under intense pressure. It opened a temporary 27-bed ward in a bid to cut waiting times amid a surge in patients.

Suzanne Hinchliffe, chief nurse at LTH, commended the efforts of staff particularly following the Boxing Day floods in Leeds but urged the public only to attend A&E “for the most serious injuries and illnesses”. The trust said it had experienced admissions at “unprecedented levels”.

A spokeswoman for York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which runs hospitals in York and Scarborough, said in December it had more emergency attendances than last year.

She added: “To help improve our performance we have made changes to some of our processes to help smooth a patient’s journey through the hospital and to reduce unnecessary delays.”