A tearful MP has told how she feared her father would die during an 18-hour A&E wait on a chair on the same day NHS data revealed a huge surge in wait times.
NHS England figures showed a record 43,792 people waited longer than 12 hours in October, from a decision to admit to actually being admitted on to a ward.
These ‘trolley waits’ were up a staggering 34% from 32,776 in September - the highest since records began in 2010.
Jess Phillips raced back from London on Wednesday to her stricken 78-year-old dad after he called 111 at 10am and was told a paramedic would be sent because he had suspected sepsis.
Seven hours later after no ambulance had arrived for retired teacher Stewart Trainor so the MP for Birmingham and Yardley drove him to the city’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Jess told the Mirror: “Its harrowing. Dad had become disorientated and was shaking.
“The system just seems to be on its knees. I’m so angry.
“I’ve used that A&E so many times in my life. It has saved my life and the lives of my loved ones but I’ve never seen it like that.
“The Tories have been in power for 12 years. What on Earth have they left us with?”
Mr Trainor suffers from a type of cancer called chronic lymphocytic leukaemia which affects the white blood cells and means he is immunosuppressed.
After arrival at A&E at 7.30pm Wednesday he was diagnosed with a severe infection.
By 3am on Thursday he was moved from the main waiting room to a chair with other elderly patients in a side room. Jess was told to go home and come back to him at 9am.
After 18 hours in A&E there were still dozens of patients ahead of Mr Trainor so doctors gave the family the option to take his antibiotics and monitor him at home.
Jess said: “It was frightening and I cried on a number of occasions while I was in there.
“The last time I was in there in March it was after my mother-in-law died. So when I was leaving my father I just felt like the same would happen as my husband.
“I thought I’ll wake up and come back and they’ll tell me he’s dead. I got back and he was still in the same chair.
“If anything his health worsened while we were at the hospital. His temperature massively increased.
“We’re lucky because there’s a few of us who can work in shifts and make home like a bit of a hospital. I’m frightened because it could still turn into sepsis.”
NHS England data shows the number of patients waiting at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission also reached a new peak of 150,922 in October, up from 131,861 the previous month.
Separate data on waits to be assessed showed just 54.8%% of patients in England were seen within four hours in major hospital A&Es last month, the worst performance on record.
The operational standard is that at least 95% of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours, but this has not been met nationally since 2015.
Jess added: “It’s harrowing but I can’t stress enough how good all the staff were. There are huge numbers of vacancies and problems with staff retention.
“As we left there were people in the waiting room who had been there before us and had been waiting for 24 hours.
“It’s horrible for people to have to go through this but it’s made a million times better by the loveliness of the staff.
“There was a 90-year-old woman who you can tell is really tough, and doesn’t want to make a fuss, and she’s sat weeping because she just wants to go home.
“At one point my dad did say ‘do you think Rishi Sunak ’s ever gone through this?’ It got a ripple of laughter in the waiting room.
“I kept trying to imagine a situation where Rishi Sunak is in the same position as my dad. But there is no world in which Rishi Sunak is in that waiting room.”
Latest data showed ambulances were now taking more than an hour on average to get to 999 calls for strokes - against an 18 minute maximum NHS standard.
They took an average of one hour, one minute and 19 seconds in October to respond to these Category 2 ‘Emergency’ calls.
Response times for Category 3 ‘Urgent’ calls, such as late stages of labour, non-severe burns and diabetes, averaged three hours, 34 minutes and 34 seconds.
The overall NHS waiting list for planned treatments edged by to a record 7.1 million appointments.
Bed blocking due to a lack of social care is a major problem with fewer than half of medically fit hospital inpatients discharged on time last month.
More than 13,000 patients spent more time in hospital than needed every single day - the equivalent of around one in 10 beds over the whole month.
NHS England medical director Sir Stephen Powis said: “There is no doubt October has been a challenging month for staff who are now facing a tripledemic of Covid-19, flu and record pressure on emergency services with more people attending A&E or requiring the most urgent ambulance callout than any other October.”
Commenting on today’s NHS data, Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: “These are challenging times and we know the coming months will see additional pressures on the healthcare system.
“But patients have the right to expect the NHS to be there for them and provide the care they need when they need it.
“That’s why we’re taking urgent action to support emergency services, boosting capacity and resilience.
“This includes an extra £500 million to speed up hospital discharge and free up beds, getting ambulances back on the road more quickly, delivering 50,000 more nurses, increasing the number of NHS 999 and 111 call handlers and creating the equivalent of at least 7,000 more beds.
“The public can also support the NHS this winter by getting their flu jabs and Covid booster vaccines if eligible.”
