Make patient care the priority at A&E

After reading your report ("A&E 'nearly worst of all'", Mercury, March 2) for its performance in January, I felt the need to put pen to paper.

My 86-year-old sister is one of those statistics who, despite being seen by her GP, who decided she needed a surgical admission, had to endure being kept waiting in a cold, draughty corridor in A&E for a total of six-and-a-half hours – breaching the four-hour target – before being admitted to the surgical unit.

I do not blame A&E as we were told, when we asked, that all admissions to the hospital have to go via A&E due to a large proportion of inappropriate admissions by GPs.

This makes the comment from Leicester City Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), stating it will pay the infirmary for meeting targets, really hypocritical as it appears the problem lies with some GPs in the first place.

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But the person who suffers most is the one needing treatment.

It would be interesting to know if this accounts for the 500 extra patients seen compared with January last year, as prior to this my daughter was admitted as a surgical emergency and went directly to a surgical assessment unit.

With the publication of the Francis Report, are the CCGs who are taking over responsibility for our health services, going to put the patient at the centre of their decision-making or continue to set targets that are of no benefit to the patient?

Muriel Hebborn, Groby.