Tens of 1000’s waited greater than 24 hours for hospital beds in A&E final yr | NHS

About 49,000 A&E visits final yr resulted in sufferers ready 24 hours or extra for a hospital mattress, with individuals aged 65 or over making up nearly 70% of instances.

Based on a freedom of data request by the Liberal Democrats, some sufferers went 10 days earlier than getting an area on a ward.

The evaluation, which used knowledge from 54 trusts in England, confirmed that of the 48,830 “trolley waits” of 24 hours or longer in 2024, 33,413 have been skilled by individuals aged 65 or over.

The time period “trolley wait” refers back to the time between a affected person being transferred to a ward after a call has been taken to confess them to hospital.

The Lib Dems stated East Kent’s NHS belief had the best variety of day or longer trolley waits final yr at 8,916, up from 30 in 2019 – pre-pandemic – adopted by Liverpool College hospitals belief with 4,315, up from 10 in 2019. Nonetheless, the occasion estimated that the actual variety of 24-hour instances was more likely to be far larger as a result of solely 54 out of 141 trusts had offered full knowledge.

The Royal Faculty of Nursing (RCN) stated the figures “solely start to scratch the floor” of a “disaster in hall care” – after stories of sufferers being seen within the corridors of hospitals on account of an absence of beds. The RCN stated the declining recruitment in nursing was including to the issue.

“The NHS and the UK authorities should start to reveal the true scale of the issue in the event that they’re severe about eradicating it,” basic secretary and chief government of the RCN Prof Nicola Ranger stated. “A single affected person ready for greater than 24 hours is unacceptable, tens of 1000’s ready exhibits why hall care have to be eradicated. It’s undignified and unsafe, and now a year-round disaster.

The Lib Dems need the federal government to make a brand new group of “super-heads”, composed of skilled NHS bosses who would go into struggling trusts and convey them as much as normal.

“The least sufferers deserve is the dignity to be handled in an acceptable space,” Lib Dem well being and social care spokesperson Helen Morgan stated. “Not the ramshackle ready rooms and corridors that far too many must undergo by way of for hours.

“That’s the reason the federal government should make sure that that is the final winter disaster anybody will expertise and finish hall care by the top of this parliament.

“The Conservatives’ beyond-shameful neglect introduced us so far, however the Labour authorities’s strategy of sitting on its palms and hoping all of it will get higher has not survived contact with actuality.”

The present Labour authorities has made slicing NHS ready lists one in all its key missions.

“We have now taken motion to guard A&E departments, introducing the brand new RSV vaccine, delivering greater than 27m Covid and flu vaccines and ending the strikes so workers have been on the frontline not the picket line for the primary winter in three years,” a Division of Well being and Social Care spokesperson stated.

“This work continues to make sure sufferers are handled rapidly. We’re essentially reforming the NHS as a part of our Plan for Change, offering extra care locally, so fewer sufferers must go to A&E, and those that do are handled sooner and with dignity.”

A spokesperson for East Kent hospitals belief stated: “We have now seen elevated attendances throughout our three essential hospitals and we’re sorry that sufferers are ready longer than we wish in our emergency departments.”

College Hospitals of Liverpool group has been contacted for remark.