Fewer people are now facing lengthy waits in a North East A&E department following a record-breaking end to the year which put acute pressure on the trust.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service revealed earlier this year how last December 10,981 individuals attended at the emergency department at Middlesbrough’s James Cook University Hospital in Marton Road, the highest monthly figure ever, made worse by a significant surge in flu and respiratory infection cases.

There were also 159 A&E waits of more than 12 hours from the decision to admit into the hospital, while only 60.2 per cent of patients were seen within the Government’s A&E four hour wait standard.

Recently released performance figures for February from the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust show that the former figure fell to 133.

The percentage of people seen by medical staff within four hours also increased to 69.8 per cent.

Ambulance handover times – the time it physically takes to safely remove a patient from an ambulance into the care of A&E – have also improved substantially.

In December only a third of ambulance handovers happened within 30 minutes and just 20 per cent within 15 minutes, a scenario likely to lead to the unwanted sight of more queuing ambulances outside A&E.

Fast forward two months later and 63.5 per cent of handovers occurred within half an hour and 44.3 per cent within a quarter of an hour.

Despite the improvements in this category, targets continue to be missed with the trust specifying 95 per cent of handovers to occur within 30 minutes and 65 per cent within 15 minutes.

In total 9,202 people went to A&E at James Cook in February, a 16.2 per cent decrease on December.

A report said the improved performance had continued from January.

It said: “Evidence based process improvement remains an organisational priority with a focus on achieving the national four-hour standard of 76 per cent in 2023/24 and ensuring all ambulance handovers take place within one hour.

“Observational work has commenced to drive out unnecessary procedures that can delay patient handover and liaison continues with local councils around timely discharges to social care.”

A board of directors meeting previously heard a claim from one non-executive director, Ada Burns, that A&E statistics published by the trust had been “relentless” in their downward trajectory.

Like other trusts, services have also been hit by industrial disputes over the past several months which have seen nurses, doctors and paramedics all walk off the job for various periods of time.

A spokeswoman said the organisation continued to remind people how important it was to choose the right service for their medical needs with A&E for life-threatening illnesses and injuries only.

This week Labour released data from Freedom of Information requests showing patients across the country enduring long waits for ambulances to arrive or being stuck outside hospitals waiting to be admitted to A&E.

One patient waited for 40 hours in the back of an ambulance outside a hospital in the South-West in an extreme case.

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A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said in response: “No one should have to wait longer than necessary to access urgent and emergency care and we are working hard to improve ambulance waiting times, which have substantially reduced from the peak of winter pressures in December 2022.

“Our urgent and emergency care recovery plan will allow people to be seen quicker by scaling up community teams, expanding virtual wards, and getting 800 new ambulances on the road.

“This is on top of the £750m we have provided this winter to speed up hospital discharges and free up beds.”