More than 99 per cent of people who visited accident and emergency, emergency care centre or minor injury units in east Kent in May were dealt with within four hours, latest figures show.

Stuart Bain, chief executive of the East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust, said 99.1 per cent of the 16,343 patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within the target time.

“There were no breaches of our maximum wait time target of 13 weeks for a first outpatient appointment or our 26 week waiting time target for inpatient treatment,” he said.

“Out of 5,130 admissions only 37 had their operations cancelled at the last minute. Despite the fact that this is an increase on last month it is still only 0.72 per cent of elective admissions which is ahead of the national target of one per cent but behind our local target of 0.5 per cent.”

Mr Bain said that more than 98 per cent of patients diagnosed with cancer received treatment within 62 days in April, up from 96.6 per cent. This meant 117 patients were treated within the target time, and two were not.

As from August 1, the trust will be re-named the East Kent University Hospitals NHS Trust as recognition of the training which is carried out.

“We are delighted at this public recognition of a part of our work which the public are not very aware of – our training of doctors, particularly undergraduate medical students and additionally the speciality training we provide for some 300 qualified doctors every year,” said Mr Bain.