Emergency Care Waiting Time Statistics (July - September 2025)

Date published: 23 October 2025

The statistical bulletin presents information on all new and unplanned review attendances during July, August, and September 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 9 November 2023, the Belfast HSC Trust on 6 June 2024, the Northern HSC Trust on 7 November 2024, and was rolled out to Southern and Western HSC Trusts on 8 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 September 2025, 14,762 calls were received by PhoneFirst (assessment of patient's needs prior to arrival at an ED). A total of 9,387 (63.6%) of these resulted in a referral to an ED, whilst 5,375 patients did not get referred to an ED.
• During September 2025, there were 67,578 attendances at EDs in Northern Ireland, 929 (1.4%) more than in September 2024 (66,649).
• Of the 67,578 ED attendances during September 2025, 52,234 (77.3%) had attended a Type 1 ED and 15,344 (22.7%) attended a Type 3 ED.
• Between September 2024 and September 2025, attendances increased at Type 1 EDs (599, 1.2%) and increased at Type 3 EDs (3,728, 32.1%).
• There were 203,230 attendances at EDs during the quarter ending 30 September 2025 (July, August and September), 2.5% (4,949) more than the same quarter in 2024 (198,281).

Please note that the remainder of the key points excludes Type 3 departments Craigavon and Daisy Hill UCCs, as these services' data is held on the GP system and not on encompass.

Left before Treatment Complete:

• During September 2025, 5.5% of all ED attendances left before their treatment was complete, compared with 6.8% in September 2024.

Unplanned Re-Attendances within 7 Days:

• During September 2025, 4.5% of the 67,578 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 September 2025, almost one in ten (9.5%) attendances at EDs had been referred by a GP, compared with 14.1% in September 2024.

Time Spent in Emergency Care Departments:

Performance against Targets

• Over a third (33.8%) of attendances at Type 1 EDs in September 2025 spent less than 4 hours in ED, compared with 84.6% at Type 3 EDs.
• During the quarter ending 30 September 2025 (July, August and September), over two fifths (44.7%) of patients spent less than 4 hours at an ED, less than in the same quarter in 2024 (46.9%).
• Over four fifths (84.6%) of patients attending a Type 3 ED in September 2025 were treated and discharged, or admitted within 4 hours of their arrival, a decrease from 87.2% in September 2024.
• Between September 2024 and September 2025, the number waiting over 12 hours decreased from 11,244 to 10,879 in September 2025, accounting for 16.1% of attendances in September 2025.

Time to Triage:

• During September 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 September 2025, the median waiting time from triage to the start of treatment by a medical professional was 1 hour 22 minutes, with 95 percent of patients receiving treatment within 8 hours 42 minutes of being triaged.

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

• Almost three fifths (59.5%) of patients attending EDs in September 2025 commenced their treatment within 2 hours of being triaged, less than in September 2024 (62.0%).

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 53 minutes in September 2025, 18 minutes more than the time taken during the same month last year (4 hours 35 minutes).
• The median time patients who were admitted to hospital spent in a Type 1 ED was 14 hours 4 minutes in September 2025, 2 hours 26 minutes less than the same month last year (16 hours 30 minutes).
• During September 2025, Causeway reported the longest median time spent in ED from arrival to admission (21 hours 16 minutes), whilst the RBHSC reported the shortest time (5 hours 9 minutes).