More than half a million patients were forced to wait more than 24 hours in accident and emergency departments before either being admitted to hospital or discharged last year, according to a shocking new report.
Further research also reveals that many lives are being lost because of long emergency delays. Experts expressed deep concern over the findings, with one commenting: “People are screaming in pain, there is noise, vomiting and the lights never go off.
“This is not a place for sick people to get better.”
The 24-hour wait figures, which are not calculated in official NHS data, have been estimated for the first time by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM).
Last year, more than 1.5million patients spent more than 12 hours waiting in A&E. Of these, 539,787 spent another 12 hours waiting – adding up to 24 hours before they were admitted to hospital or discharged.
RCEM data also show for every 72 patients waiting between eight and 12 hours from arrival in the emergency department, there is one extra or “excess” patient death.This, they calculate, is contributing to approximately 270 additional deaths every week.
The figures also show record levels of patients having to wait more than four hours. Between October and December 2023, 30 percent of A&E patients – just under two million people – had to wait more than the four-hour standard NHS waiting time to be discharged or admitted to hospital, NHS figures show.
This is a six-fold increase over the past two decades. This peaked in January 2024, when more than four in 10 patients arriving at A&E had to wait more than 4 hours to be admitted, transferred, or discharged.
Alarmingly, the number of people waiting more than 12 hours to be admitted following an emergency referral has also seen a staggering rise – from 123 in 2011-12 to 410,092 in 2022-23.
Experts say the figures highlight the growing number of patients in Britain living with exacerbated health conditions and serious illnesses linked to record hospital waiting lists and excess demand on GP services since the Covid pandemic.
They also underline an acute lack of social care with up to one in three English hospital beds occupied by patients fit for discharge who cannot go home or to a care home because of a lack of care in the community.
A senior A&E consultant, who did not want to be named, said: “Staff are burned out, hospitals are dangerously overcrowded and patients are being abandoned in corridors. This is causing harm and leading to unnecessary deaths.”
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the RCEM said: “When people are sick they need rest and support. Twenty-hour stays in A&E are harmful and can even be deadly.
“People are screaming in pain, there is noise, vomiting and the lights never go off. This is not a place for sick people to get better. Any new government cannot tolerate this situation. It is unconscionable to continue like this and the Government must take urgent action to address it.”
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt defended the Government’s record on the health service in last week’s Budget speech, describing it as the “biggest reason most of us are proud to be British” and saying spending had increased by “over a third in real terms”.
The former health secretary said the “systems that support its staff are often antiquated” and described doctors, nurses and ward staff spending “hours every day filling out forms when they could be looking after patients”.
He announced plans to “slash the 13million hours lost by doctors and nurses every year to outdated IT systems” and to “use AI to cut down and potentially cut in half form filling by doctors”.
Mr Hunt said: “The NHS was there for us in the pandemic. And today, with nearly £6million of additional funding, this government is there for the NHS.”
Carl Heneghan, an urgent care GP and director of Oxford University’s Centre of Evidence Based Medicine said: “Since Covid, A&E departments have been pushed over the edge and are seemingly unable to recover. The current situation is unacceptable, as people are dying waiting for effective treatments. Whichever party gets in at the election needs to take this problem by the scruff of the neck and tackle it head on.”
Brett Hill, head of health and protection at independent consultancy Broadstone, said long A&E waits were “endangering lives, health and wellbeing”.
He added: “In critical or time-sensitive situations, people need to rely on rapid treatment otherwise they face more complex, serious treatments which will take longer to return them to full-health and risk significantly poorer outcomes.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Cutting waiting lists is one of the Government’s top five priorities and, despite winter pressures and the impact of industrial action, latest data shows overall NHS waiting lists have decreased for the third month in a row.
“A&E performance on four-hour waits also improved in January compared to December, with 70.3 percent of patients being seen within four hours, despite the highest number of January A&E attendances on record.”
An NHS England spokesman said: “The range of measures in the NHS urgent and emergency care recovery plan including extra beds, greater use of same day emergency care and virtual wards is helping to improve patient flow and reduce waiting times for patients, with A&E performance better in every month of 2023 than the same month the year before.”
