Figures released this week by the government show that Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) is one of the worst performing NHS Foundation Trusts in the UK for seeing A&E patients within four hours.

NHS England, who carried out the report into trusts across the country, concluded that only 75.2 per cent of patients in CUH A&E departments were seen within the four hour waiting time last quarter – significantly lower than the government’s 95 per cent national target.

The revised target of 95 per cent was introduced after the original figure of 98 per cent, set by the Blair administration in 2004, was deemed “not clinically justified” by the coalition government.

Despite this, the CUH trust missed the national target by 19.8 per cent, one of the lowest in the country.

Only London North West Healthcare NHS Trust and North Midlands achieved lower figures of 68.8 and 70.5 per cent respectively. Neighbouring hospital, Hinchingbrooke, achieved 90.3 per cent in the period from early October to December 28.

Ruth Rogers, chairwoman of Healthwatch Cambridgeshire – a campaign to improve patient care in the area, was concerned at the findings.

“I think we have known for some time they are under quite considerable pressure,” she said. “There’s a lot of people turning up there. Sometimes people will go with relatively trivial things if it’s not easy to get a GP appointment in the early stages.”

Over the Christmas period, both Peterborough and Addenbrooke’s hospitals switched to their ‘major incident’ plan due to the volume of patients visiting the departments.

Operations were cancelled and consultants put on longer shifts in order to discharge patients and free up beds. Up to 300 people in Cambridge attend A&E each day.

A CUH spokesperson has said “Implementing a new electronic patient records system in October affected the speed of processing information, especially in A&E which was already very busy.

“This has had an adverse impact on hitting targets. We are a major trauma centre, hyper-acute stroke centre and the only provider of many specialist services in the East of England.”

Dr Neil Modha, Chief Clinical Officer for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group, reminds us that on the use of A&E: “We are asking that the public consider where they go when they are feeling unwell, and only use A&E or 999 when they are acutely unwell or have a life-threatening condition.

“The public can see their GP, use the ‘Minor Injury or Illness’ clinics or walk-in centres” and, for out-of-hours medical advice, the public are urged to phone NHS 111 for advice and direction on the best place to be seen. On Friday 9th January, the chief executive of Addenbrooke’s Hospital announced that the “internal major incident” had ended, but that capacity remained at a “critical” level.

It has also recently been revealed that Cambridgeshire health services are to get an extra £20 million during the coming year. In 2014 Cambridgeshire healthcare recieved £35 million below the government’s own calculations for a fair share of NHS spending.