THE accident and emergency department at the Royal Surrey County Hospital has been named as the best performing in the country. The accolade comes thanks to a new report on accident and emergence departments nationally since January. The hospital in Guildford has been awarded £100,000 for reaching waiting time targets in A&E for the third quarter of the financial year and is on course to achieve a similar reward for the fourth quarter. These figures are a far cry from 18 months ago when patients regularly slept overnight on A&E and average of eight patients daily breached the 12-hour wait. The hospital then hit the headlines for being one of the worst performing hospitals nationally. However today sees a totally different picture with 99.6 per cent of patients seen, treated and either admitted or discharged within four hours. A number of initiatives have been implemented including new medical and surgical assessment units which mean that patients referred to hospital by their GP are admitted straight to the MAU or SAU. The establishment of these units means patients can be treated immediately by dedicated medical or surgical teams. In addition delayed discharges, commonly known as bed-blocking, have reduced rom over 50 at its worst to single figures and this has freed up a significant number of beds for patients requiring emergency admission. The A&E department has changed its practice and where appropriate, some patients who do not need to go to casualty are referred to the new walk-in centre run by Guildford and Waverley PCT. "We knew we were making excellent progress but to be the top performing A&E in the country since the beginning of the year is a spectacular achievement, especially given the point we started from," the hospital's chief executive Matthew Swindells said. "So many staff in A&E, the surgical and medical assessment units and on the wards have worked tremendously hard to bring about this dramatic turn around. When I arrived at the hospital two years ago I received more complaints about A&E than any other department now I only receive compliments which reflects the impact the improvements have had on patients." The achievement of the number one spot is all the more remarkable as the number of emergency admissions since Christmas has reached almost unprecedented numbers.