The number of patients waiting longer than 12 hours in A&E is far higher than official figures show, experts claim.
A study at a third of NHS hospital trusts found 38,000 patients waited for a bed for 12 hours or more over the last nine weeks - nearly three times more than the 13,025 twelve-hour waits officially reported in England in the past eight years.
This is because NHS England controversially records waiting times from the moment a doctor decides to admit the patient.
Calling for an end to “corridor care”, experts from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said officials should record waiting times from the moment a patient arrives at hospital to uncover the true scale of the problem.
In their annual Winter Flow Project, the RCEM found over 5,000 patients waited for longer than 12 hours in the Emergency Departments of 50 Trusts and Boards across the UK in the first week of December alone.
President of the RCEM, Dr Katherine Henderson, said: “In a nine-week period, at only a third of trusts across the UK, we’ve seen nearly three times the number of 12 hour waits than has been officially reported in eight years in England. This must be fixed.
“The key difference in the data is the way in which it is reported. Our data measures the number of patients waiting over 12 hours from the moment they arrive at an ED, whereas NHS England (unlike Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) start the clock at the point at which a decision to admit is made – meaning that a patient could already have been waiting hours before this.
“The way in which it has historically been reported does our patients a disservice and hides the true scale of the problem of corridor care.
“These figures are truly shocking and are terrible for patients and staff alike. Many patients are now getting often life changing news while stranded on a trolley in a corridor. This cannot be right, and we must strive to put an end to ‘corridor care’.
“But we can only do that if we acknowledge the true scale of the problem.”
She also said the first Winter Flow report revealed A&E departments are in the “worst state ever” with just 68.79% of patients seen within four hours.
Anonymised data from 50 sites will be published on a weekly basis in the Winter Flow Project, which runs from October until March next year.
Dr Henderson added: “We are clearly in the worst state we’ve ever been in as we enter the true winter season. Norovirus and the ongoing pensions taxation issue will not have helped, but this decline has been long in the making.
“We are deeply concerned that one of the areas of the health service most valued by patients - the Emergency Departments - are, year on year, struggling to cope and increasingly difficult places for staff to deliver the standard of care they want to. “Emergency Departments are the NHS safety net and the safety net is buckling.”
Responding to the report, Dame Donna Kinnair from the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Nursing staff in hospitals all over England are trying their hardest so all patients receive the high quality care they deserve but as these figures show the odds are stacked against them.
“Nobody wants the image of the 2019 general election to be a patient marooned on a trolley in a corridor for 12 hours - but that is exactly the picture highlighted from the data from these Trusts.”
NHS England has been approached for comment.
