NHS patients in some areas of the UK wait at least 12 hours in accident and emergency departments before seeing a healthcare professional, official data shows.
At The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, around one in 10 of those who visited A&E last month were waiting 12 hours.
At University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, the number of patients was 1,853, equivalent to around one in 20 of all those seen in November.
Meanwhile, other hospitals in the country only treated half of their patients needing urgent care within four hours last month, which is well below the health service’s target of 76 per cent.
It comes amid warnings from senior doctors about hospitals “full to bursting” with patients as the health service faces a “quademia” of winter flu, Covid, norovirus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Dr Ian Higginson of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) yesterday warned that the situation facing patients needing treatment on the NHS is “quite grim”.
He explained that patients are forced to wait in corridors due to a shortage of beds, while ambulances queue outside and warned of an increased risk to the health of staff.
Dr Higginson told Sky News: “Normally, just before Christmas, we would expect a bit of a pause.” That’s why I’m afraid things seem quite difficult for our patients and our staff.
Senior doctors have issued dire warnings that hospitals are “full to bursting” with patients as the health service faces a “quadremic” of winter viruses such as flu. stock image
‘We simply do not have enough beds in our hospitals for patients admitted as emergencies.
“We don’t have enough staff for those beds and we don’t have any headroom.”
Now, a Mailonline analysis of NHS data has revealed which emergency departments in England can expect the longest delays.
As well as Shrewsbury and Birmingham, University Hospitals Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust also had shocking numbers of 12-hour waits – around one in 25 patients.
During four-hour waits, Shrewsbury and Telford performed the worst in the country with 49 per cent of patients not seen in this period.
By contrast, The Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust performed the best of all major A&E departments, with just over 88 per cent of patients seen within four hours.
This trust was also one of the few major A&Es to avoid 12-hour waits during the month.
The others were Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
In total, only 20 NHS trusts with a major A&E service achieved the target of seeing 76 per cent of all A&E patients within four hours, about a sixth of the total.
NHS officials previously warned that data from last month, which was the busiest November on record, demonstrated the strain the health service was under as it faced the pressures of what has been called a “quadraemia”.
Speaking at the time, NHS national medical director Professor Sir Stephen Powis said: “The surge in cases of flu and other seasonal viruses hitting hospitals is really worrying for patients and the NHS – the numbers add up. to our “quadriemia”, “concerns.”
The latest NHS data suggests that some A&Es in England could be better placed than others to cope with an influx of emergency attendances. stock image
According to health services guidelines, 76 percent of injured patients should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of being treated.
The health service’s latest weekly winter report, published just days before Christmas, showed that one in every 18 NHS beds was currently occupied by one of these pathogens.
Recently, nurses and doctors have been informed about how to treat patients in hallways. But the RCEM called the guidance “normalizing the dangerous.”
The latest data comes from annual NHS figures, published earlier this year, which showed a staggering 440,000 patients in England were forced to wait more than 12 hours in A&E.
This represented an increase of 30,000 from the previous year. By comparison, a decade ago only 1,200 waited that long.
The annual data also showed that two-thirds of A&E attendees at England’s worst-performing hospitals also had to wait more than four hours for care in the year to March 2024.
The full trust-by-trust results for the annual data, published in September, can be seen via our interactive lookup table above.