Northern Ireland emergency-care attendances rise as waits lengthen
Emergency departments in Northern Ireland recorded 217,038 attendances between July and September, an increase of 13,708, or 6.7 per cent, on the same quarter in 2025. Over the same three-month period, 42.3 per cent of patients spent less than four hours in an emergency department, down from 44.7 per cent a year earlier.
The figures provide a quarterly picture of activity and time spent in emergency care. They are not a measure of individual patients, outcomes after discharge or the reasons why people attended. The health department has also said the statistics should be read with caution while the new encompass patient-record system is being implemented and stabilised.
September brought higher attendance
There were 72,697 emergency-department attendances in September, 5,064 more than in September 2025. Of those, 56,049 were at Type 1 departments, which are consultant-led 24-hour services with full resuscitation facilities. The remaining 16,648 were at Type 3 departments, which include services for minor injuries and illnesses.
The monthly figures show 13,065 attendances lasting more than 12 hours in September, compared with 10,881 in the same month last year. That amounted to 18.3 per cent of all attendances. The department’s published draft ministerial standard says that 95 per cent of patients at Type 1, 2 or 3 departments should be admitted or discharged within four hours, and that no patient should wait longer than 12 hours.
For September alone, 41.7 per cent of patients were treated and discharged, or admitted, within four hours. Performance varied by department type: 30.7 per cent of Type 1 attendances met the four-hour measure, while 82.4 per cent of Type 3 attendees were treated and discharged or admitted within that time. These are different services and patient groups, so the figures should not be treated as directly interchangeable.
Measures of time in care
The median time from arrival to triage in September was 15 minutes. From triage to the start of treatment, the median was one hour and 45 minutes. Just over half of patients, 53.5 per cent, started treatment within two hours of triage, compared with 59.9 per cent in September 2025.
Among patients attending a Type 1 department, the median time spent there was five hours and 27 minutes for people discharged home, 38 minutes longer than a year earlier. For patients admitted to hospital, the median was 14 hours and 28 minutes, four minutes longer than in September 2025. A median identifies the midpoint in a set of waits; it does not describe every patient’s experience.
The release also recorded that 8.1 per cent of September attendances left before treatment was complete, compared with 6.0 per cent a year earlier. It does not establish why individual people left, whether they later received care elsewhere or whether higher activity caused the change.
Data qualifications matter
The quarterly release covers new and unplanned review attendances. Planned review attendances are not included. It also notes that the detailed measures exclude the Craigavon and Daisy Hill urgent care centres because their data is held on a GP system rather than encompass.
The health department classifies the performance figures as official statistics in development during the transition to encompass. It says the data is meaningful and of sufficient quality for publication and use, but readers should apply caution. The department is investigating data-quality issues in the Southern Trust’s triage and treatment records, where the number of valid instances is lower than usual.
The department also advises against direct comparisons with other UK jurisdictions. Emergency-care services are organised differently, and the measures do not necessarily cover the same patients or use equivalent definitions. The new figures therefore show a Northern Ireland snapshot for the quarter ending 30 September, rather than a like-for-like ranking against England, Scotland or Wales.
