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Mr. Nesbitt has also told MLAs that he understood the issue of ‘double waits’ at the Altnagelvin Emergency Department (ED) for patients who had already presented at the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) was being addressed. He was asked about waits at the Derry hospital by the Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Colm Gildernew. “While ambulance waiting times have been bad down the years, I am getting a hint that there is some really solid, positive Northern Ireland-wide news that includes Altnagelvin…a focus is being put on that issue, and that focus is beginning to yield results,” said the minister. Mr. Gildernew claimed ‘the situation at Altnagelvin has significantly worsened since the removal of emergency general surgery from the SWAH’. “You will be familiar with the phrase ‘double ED waits’ for patients from that hospital. Those double ED waits continue. The Ambulance Service has outlined very worrying prolonged delays. "Can you indicate what engagement you are having with the trust in that area about removing those double ED waits, which are discriminating against patients coming from Fermanagh?” he asked. The Health Minister referred to a Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) report on the temporary suspension of Emergency General Surgery (EGS) at SWAH that ‘exposed to the public the idea of people having a wait for assessment in the ED in the SWAH but then having to do that again when they get to Altnagelvin’. He said the phenomenon was being addressed. "I think that the Trust was already on it, as it were, but had not cracked it. It was aware that it was an issue that needed to be addressed and that we did not have to have the double ED wait,” said Mr. Nesbitt. The minister said he believed the roll-out of the new electronic care record system Encompass will result in further improvements. “If double ED waits are still happening, I would be concerned about that. The Member is nodding to say that that is still happening. I will certainly take that away, because I was of the impression that we might well have seen that problem off by now,” he declared.
