Thousand patients a day wait 12 hours for A&E care

RECORD A&E waits last year saw more than 1,100 patients every day waiting more than 12 hours to be admitted to hospital.

In 2023, a total of 419,560 patients waited 12 hours or more to be admitted to a hospital ward with an emergency, enduring what are known as trolley waits. The figures have grown rapidly in recent years, and last year’s total was 20 per cent more than the 348,135 seen in 2022, and ten-fold higher than the 48,626 in 2021, analysis of NHS figures by the Liberal Democrats shows.

The number of patients waiting for more than 12 hours in 2023 was more than 50 times higher than before the pandemic, with just 8,272 people facing such delays in 2019, despite there being 6.5million emergency admissions, more than the 6.3million there were last year.

NHS figures published last week showed that 44,000 patients were waiting over 12 hours on a trolley to be admitted in December, the third worst month on record.

Dr Tim Cooksley, former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said failures “to mitigate winter pressures” had “resulted in degrading corridor care for vulnerable, especially older, patients”. “There is a state of turmoil in urgent care services which patients, their families and staff witness and experience on an hourly basis,” he said.

Prof Adrian Boyle, chief executive of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “Twelve-hour waits were once non-existent and categorically unacceptable, now they are so normalised, with December’s data showing one in nine patients waited 12 hours.”

The Department for Health and Social Care was approached for comment.