Emergency Care Waiting Time Statistics (April-June 2025)

Date published: 28 August 2025

The statistical bulletin presents information on all new and unplanned review attendances during April, May, and June 2025. It details information on the time spent in EDs during each of these months including; the monthly performance against the DoH emergency care waiting times target for EDs and the time waited for key milestones during a patient's journey through ED, whilst they are being cared for in an ED, including the time to triage and time to start of treatment.

Encompass is a new electronic patient record system with a single digital care record for every citizen in Northern Ireland who receives health and social care. It aims to create better experiences for patients, service users and staff by bringing together information from various legacy health systems into one administrative system.

The programme was first introduced in the South Eastern Health and Social (HSC) Trust on 9th November 2023, the Belfast HSC Trust on 6th June 2024, the Northern HSC Trust on 7th November 2024, and was rolled out to Southern and Western HSC Trusts on 8th May 2025.

The statistics within this publication has been assessed to the standard of Accredited Official Statistics, however during implementation and stabilisation of the change of data source to the encompass system, they are considered to be 'official statistics in development' which are a subset of Official Statistics in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics. While caution must be exercised when using these figures, they are a meaningful representation of what they measure and are of sufficient quality for publication and use.

This information release is published on the Emergency Care Waiting Times Website.

Key Points

Attendances at Emergency Care Departments:

Urgent and Emergency Care Attendances:

• In June 2025, 15,885 calls were received by PhoneFirst (assessment of patient's needs prior to arrival at an ED). A total of 9,040 (56.9%) of these resulted in a referral to an ED, whilst 6,845 patients did not get referred to an ED.
• During June 2025, there were 68,217 attendances at EDs in Northern Ireland, 1,655 (2.5%) more than in June 2024 (66,562).
• Of the 68,217 ED attendances during June 2025, 51,880 (76.1%) had attended a Type 1 ED and 16,337 (23.9%) attended a Type 3 ED.
• Between June 2024 and June 2025, attendances decreased at Type 1 EDs (449, 0.9%) and increased at Type 3 EDs (5,293, 47.9%).
• There were 210,705 attendances at EDs during the quarter ending 30 June 2025 (April, May and June), 2.1% (4,316) more than the same quarter in 2024 (206,389).

Left before Treatment Complete:

• During June 2025, 6.5% of all ED attendances left before their treatment was complete, compared with 7.3% in June 2024.

Unplanned Re-Attendances within 7 Days:

• During June 2025, 4.3% of the 68,217 ED attendances were unplanned review attendances who had returned to the same ED within 7 days of their original attendance for the same condition.

Referrals by GP:

• During June 2025, over one in twelve (8.4%) attendances at EDs had been referred by a GP, compared with 13.9% in June 2024.

Time Spent in Emergency Care Departments:

Performance against Targets

• Over a third (33.2%) of attendances at Type 1 EDs in June 2025 spent less than 4 hours in ED, compared with 84.6% at Type 3 EDs.
• During the quarter ending 30 June 2025 (April, May and June), over two fifths (43.7%) of patients spent less than 4 hours at an ED, less than in the same quarter in 2024 (45.0%).
• Over four fifths (84.6%) of patients attending a Type 3 ED in June 2025 were treated and discharged, or admitted within 4 hours of their arrival, a decrease from 88.5% in June 2024.
• Between June 2024 and June 2025, the number waiting over 12 hours increased from 10,868 to 11,131 in June 2025, accounting for 16.3% of attendances in June 2025.

Time to Triage:

• During June 2025, the median waiting time from arrival at an ED to triage (initial assessment) by a medical professional was 14 minutes, with 95 percent of patients having their care needs assessed for the first time by a medical professional within 1 hour 12 minutes of arrival.

Time to Start of Treatment:

• During June 2025, the median waiting time from triage to the start of treatment by a medical professional was 1 hour 26 minutes, with 95 percent of patients receiving treatment within 9 hours 11 minutes of being triaged.

Target to Commence Treatment within 2 Hours of Triage (80%):

• Almost three fifths (58.0%) of patients attending EDs in June 2025 commenced their treatment within 2 hours of being triaged, less than in June 2024 (61.5%).

Total Time in Type 1 Emergency Care Department:

• The median time patients who were discharged home (not admitted) spent in a Type 1 ED was 4 hours 59 minutes in June 2025, 28 minutes more than the time taken during the same month last year (4 hours 31 minutes).
• The median time patients who were admitted to hospital spent in a Type 1 ED was 14 hours 21 minutes in June 2025, 44 minutes less than the same month last year (15 hours 5 minutes).
• During June 2025, Altnagelvin Area reported the longest median time spent in ED from arrival to admission (19 hours 21 minutes), whilst the RBHSC reported the shortest time (5 hours 32 minutes).