University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust said plans are in place to address issues(Image: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Crucial services provided by Birmingham hospitals are under close scrutiny by national bosses to ensure they improve.

University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS Foundation Trust’s board of directors was told NHS England has placed it in Tier 1 for elective care, cancer and diagnostics for quarter one of 2025/26.

This is the highest level of oversight and support and means they are amongst the trusts that are most challenged in these areas.

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The board was also alerted to issues around urgent and emergency care and endoscopy performance during the meeting on Thursday (June 5).

Bosses were told work is being carried out and plans put in place to address concerns with some areas already seeing improvements.

A report said urgent and emergency care services have ‘steadily improved’ while recovering from winer pressures.

Meeting the four-hour standard improved to 62.4 per cent in March compared with 61.7 per cent in February but remains below the 68.4 per cent monthly target.

Overall, the average time spent in Emergency Departments decreased in March to 347 minutes from 367 in the previous month.

Admitted patients spent on average 698 minutes receiving treatment compared with 758 in February.

But the report added the number of 30-minute ambulance handover breaches increased to 4,788 in March compared with 4,491 in February.

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The trust’s performance in hitting the ’62 day cancer target’ – which aims for patients to receive their first treatment in that time – was 53.4 per cent for February, below the 67 per cent trajectory.

The report said plans are in place to address this while a UHB Cancer Board is beng set up to provide oversight and trust wide improvement.

The board was also alerted to issues with endoscopy performance following a decision to stop insourcing and the resulting loss of capacity.

Iain Pickles, Chief Operating Officer, said a medium term plan was in place for providing the capacity but this was reliant on successful recruitment for the specialist roles required.

For elective care, which covers planned non-emergency services, there were 79 breaches of the 65 week target in March, with 42 of these in Opthamology.

The report said work continues to address late starts/early finishes, lost hours, booking efficiency, turnaround times and ‘did not attends’/on the day cancellations.

And for diagnostics, which includes services such as X-rays, CT scans and MRI, the trust’s combined performance for March was 64.28 per cent, falling from 67.87 per cent.

The report said trajectories for 2025/26 have been developed and submitted as part of the annual plan.

Dr Peter Williams, Non-Executive Director, told the meeting: “It’s a clear concern for us. We need to understand if there are structural issues underpinning this.

“We know there has been huge focus, we know there has been a lot of work in this area so the question will be why aren’t we seeing improvements that we’d expect from this input?”

The report to the board did say the letter received from NHS England has noted progress made by the trust in terms of reducing long waits.