The “terrible” state of A&Es was exposed in fascinating detail today with data showing England faring worse in the UK.
This is despite patients in Labour-ruled Wales typically facing the longest delays over the past decade.
More than 40 per cent of patients attending A&E in England wait at least four hours to be seen, the equivalent of around 900,000 each month.
It marks a five-fold increase in the space of a decade, illustrating the scale of the crisis that has seen patients forced to sleep on the floor or sit on stretchers in hospital corridors while waiting for a bed.
Experts fear the situation will worsen, with the weakened NHS trapped in an “eternal winter” amid staff shortages and unprecedented demand.
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The same Office for National Statistics (ONS) analysis also suggested that England’s A&E units are the quietest.
In September 2023, it recorded 13.6 attendances per 1,000 people, half the figure recorded in Northern Ireland (29). Meanwhile, Scotland and Wales reported 20.8.
Attendance rates plummeted during the pandemic, as patients stopped coming to A&E in case they contracted Covid.
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have seen rates approach pre-crisis levels, but England is still far behind.
Experts speculated that the diabolical waits observed in the ER may have deterred thousands of patients from seeking care.
Dennis Reed, of Silver Voices, which campaigns for older Britons, told MailOnline: ‘These statistics show that relatively fewer patients attend A&E in England than elsewhere in the UK, but waits are longer.
‘NHS England should explain the reasons for this.
“It could be that with hundreds of thousands of people waiting more than 12 hours, people stop going to the hospital and try to self-treat, or they walk through the door of the emergency department and see the length of the waits. The monitors and turn on their heads. heels immediately.
He added: “At all levels of the NHS it is becoming more difficult to access the level of care required and we are becoming a sicker nation as a result.”
Dr Tim Cooksley, immediate past president of the Society of Intensive Care Medicine, said: “Each winter of the last decade, particularly in urgent and emergency care, it has gotten slightly worse.
‘That trend has resulted in a terrible situation that has not yet stopped, let alone shows signs of reversing.
‘At the heart of the crisis remains the fact that there is not enough workforce or capacity to meet the demands of an increasingly aging population with multiple health problems, issues that we and many others have consistently raised in recent years. .
“There is no resilience to cope with the excess stress caused by any of the highly predictable storms we see occurring in what is now commonly called an “eternal winter” in the NHS.”
He added: “High levels of staff absence, burnout and low morale are a constant across the NHS, with high mortality rates and increasing numbers of patients waiting more than 12 hours in emergency departments.” , which illustrates the problem.”
“The solutions are neither easy nor quick, and it will take at least a decade to return to providing high-quality intensive care.”
Meanwhile, Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told MailOnline: “This data shows clearly and starkly how bad things have become over the last decade for patients attending A&E and those who work in them.
“Too many people have to stay too long. Long stays are not only uncomfortable or tedious, they are also harmful, especially for older people.
Steven Wells (pictured sleeping on the floor at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent) endured a 45-hour A&E wait after he began vomiting blood and was forced to sleep on the floor in November while waiting to be admitted.
The 31-year-old forklift driver (pictured sleeping on the floor of William Harvey Hospital) said: “Honestly, it was like a war zone at times. It makes me not want to go back to the hospital as the last time was so traumatic.” and shameful. “There are people who look down on you, walk over you, and all you want is to be taken care of.”
‘Increasingly, emergency services staff report that, in addition to assessing new arrivals, they have to care for people who should be hospitalized.
‘This leads to further delays for patients and intolerable working conditions for staff.
“Our urgent and emergency care system exists to make people better, but the current situation is actually making people sicker.”
England saw the biggest increase in the proportion of patients waiting at least four hours over the last decade, ONS data revealed.
Rates stood at 8.1 percent in 2013, but jumped to 42.4 percent in September of last year.
In comparison, Scotland saw rates rise from 11.7 per cent in 2013 to 33.5 per cent in 2023, while Wales saw a jump from 15.6 per cent to 40.5 per cent.
However, four-hour waits were longer in Labour-ruled Wales than in England every month from January 2013 to August 2022.
Liberal Democrat health and social care spokesperson Daisy Cooper warned patients were being forced to “endless waits”.
He added: ‘This Conservative government has brought our health service to its knees.
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‘They have ignored patients’ needs, allowed hospital buildings to collapse and proven themselves unfit to run our NHS.
‘They are inexplicably refusing to cancel the planned cut to the NHS budget.
“Our health service must be at the center of the government’s priorities, not simply dropped.”
All health services operating in the three nations follow policy guidance which states that every effort should be made to transfer or admit patients, who require a period of observation, assessment or recovery, to suitable facilities when available. , at which point the waiting time ends. ‘ it stops.
But there is no such policy in Northern Ireland, meaning the nation cannot be directly compared to the rest of the UK.
Becky Tinsley, deputy director of the ONS, said the report aimed to “make it easier to understand health data from across the UK” and help create “a joint statistical picture”.
He added: ‘This does not mean that we are developing a one-size-fits-all approach to data across all four countries.
‘We understand that there are differences in policies, infrastructure and processes that may affect data collection and our ability to make comparisons.
‘There are also other factors that are important to consider, such as differences in the age of the populations of each of the countries, which impact people’s health and result in different demands on the health service.