More than 1.5 million patients in England had to wait 12 hours or more in A&E last year, according to figures that MPs say expose the consequences of the government’s neglect of the NHS.
Last month, 177,805 patients had to wait twelve hours or more before being admitted to the emergency room, an average of 5,735 per day. This means that one in ten patients (12.4%) arriving at A&E have waited twelve hours before being admitted, transferred or discharged.
A total of 1,540,945 patients experienced long waiting times between February 2023 and January 2024, according to analysis of official data by the Liberal Democrats.
“Every day, thousands of patients are left in fear and pain in overcrowded emergency departments, waiting 12 hours or more for the care they need,” said Daisy Cooper, the party’s health spokesperson. “These devastating delays expose the grim impact of this government’s neglect of the NHS.”
January was the worst month of the past year when the winter pressure hit. In some hospitals, one in four patients experienced delays of twelve hours or more. One 88-year-old woman had to wait 16 hours, the Lib Dems said.
The analysis showed how much time patients actually spent in the emergency room after arrival before being admitted, transferred or discharged. The figures are separate from the ‘trolley wait’ figures published last week, which only measure the time that passes after a decision has been made to admit a patient.
The number of people who waited more than twelve hours in A&E departments from a decision to admit them to actual admission rose from 44,045 in December to 54,308 in January.
This was the second highest figure ever, just below the 54,573 in December 2022.
The number of people who waited at least four hours after deciding whether to admit also grew, from 148,282 in December to 158,721 last month – again the second highest figure ever.
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Long emergency room wait times have been linked to serious patient harm. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has previously highlighted data showing that once people wait longer than about six hours and need to be admitted to hospital, their risk of dying begins to increase.
Cooper said: “Waiting times of 12 hours or more can have catastrophic consequences for people’s health, especially the elderly and vulnerable. No one should have to wait that long for care, but in some areas these unacceptably long delays have become almost the norm. It is time Conservative ministers started taking this NHS crisis seriously rather than ignoring all the warning signs while patients suffer.”
The Department of Health and Social Care said emergency department performance was improving despite winter pressures and the highest ever number of emergency visits in January.
“We are committed to continuing to improve patient care as we have already delivered on our commitment to create an additional 5,000 permanent hospital beds and 10,000 home hospital beds, freeing up capacity and reducing waiting times,” a spokesperson added.