NHS in summer emergency care crisis awaits, doctors say

The NHS is being engulfed in a summer crisis, senior doctors say, amid severe ambulance delays, corridors clogged with trolleys and patients waiting 25 hours in A&E.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) sounded the alarm over the ‘national scandal’ of long waits for emergency care, which it said was leading to ‘completely preventable’ deaths at a time of year when there should be some disruption should be from the traditional pressure experienced during winter.

The elderly in particular bore the brunt of the fallout, with many forced to wait gruelingly long for a bed after the decision was made to admit them to hospital, the council said.

A snapshot survey by the RCEM of emergency department heads from across Britain, carried out between Monday and Wednesday this week, revealed the extent of the summer crisis in hospitals.

Nine in ten (91%) of the 63 A&E bosses admitted that NHS patients were being ‘put at risk’ on their wards due to the quality of care that could be provided under the current circumstances.

Eighty-seven percent said patients were being treated in hallways and 68% said patients were waiting in ambulances outside their emergency rooms.

An emergency department leader revealed that one of their patients waited more than 19 hours this week for a hospital bed to become available after a decision was made to admit them after they had already waited six hours to be seen. The patient ended up waiting in the emergency room for a total of 25 hours.

“It used to be that A&E doctors expected a peak in demand in the colder months due to the usual seasonal illnesses and that there would be some downtime and time to regroup in the summer,” says RCEM president, Dr . Boyle, said. “But those days are long gone.”

Boyle told the Guardian that the NHS was trapped in a “Narnic” winter “permacrisis” all year round.

The warning came a week after the latest NHS figures showed the overall waiting list in England had risen for the first time in seven months.

At the end of April, an estimated 7.57 million treatments were waiting to be carried out, for 6.33 million patients – a slight increase from 7.54 million treatments and 6.29 million patients at the end of March, according to NHS England.

Boyle has written to the major political parties calling for action. In the letter he said described the summer crisis as “nothing short of a national scandal”, while calling for specific commitments to tackle problems in emergency departments.

The study results showed “how much harm and risk our patients have only just been exposed to,” he added. “These responses reveal the true and shameful reality of the state of emergency in Britain.

“Last year, deaths of more than 250 people a week were associated with long emergency room waits – that’s the equivalent of a plane full of people every seven days.

“These deaths are completely preventable if the long wait before admission is addressed and eradicated.

“But as political parties set out their plans and commitments in the run-up to the general election, we see no manifesto setting out one specific policy aimed at addressing this scandalous and shameful situation.

“The risk to patients’ lives is very real, very serious and happening right now. People are dying, and all we have from those hoping to form the next government is a deafening silence on this issue, which is truly a matter of life and death.”

The Conservatives, Labor and Liberal Democrats have pledged in their manifestos to tackle NHS waiting.

The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said: “24 Hours in A&E was a TV programme; under the Tories it is a grim reality for patients. We will fix the front door of the NHS by bringing back the GP, so patients are not forced into A&E because they cannot get a GP appointment.”

Lib Dem health spokesperson Daisy Cooper said the government’s failure to invest in social care “has left emergency departments across the country picking up the pieces”, leaving “patients at risk and has cost taxpayers more.” She added: “Every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to improve the NHS and ensure people get access to the care they need when they need it.”