Round 49,000 A&E sufferers needed to wait 24 hours or extra for a hospital mattress in England final yr, in keeping with NHS figures.
Information compiled by the Liberal Democrats from freedom of knowledge requests reveals the longest wait was 10 days and 13 hours.
The occasion stated there have been 48,830 “trolley waits” of 24 hours or longer in 2024. That’s 19.8% greater than 2023 (40,735) and 57.9% greater than 2022 (30,921).
A “trolley wait” is the time taken for a affected person to be transferred to a ward after a call has been taken to confess them to hospital.
The Lib Dems stated the actual numbers had been more likely to be far greater as a result of solely 54 out of 141 NHS trusts had supplied full information.
Over the past three years, the share of these ready aged 65 or over remained constant at round 70%.
The Royal Faculty of Nursing stated the figures “only begin to scratch the surface” of a “crisis in corridor care” – and that declining recruitment in nursing was including to the issue.
Basic secretary Professor Nicola Ranger stated hall care is “undignified and unsafe” and “must be eradicated”.
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0:54Well being sec didn’t anticipate scrapping NHS England
Disaster ‘will take time’ to repair
The federal government has made slicing NHS ready lists one among its key missions.
It insisted progress had been made by deploying RSV, COVID and flu vaccines, ending strikes by healthcare employees and reforming the well being service, together with scrapping NHS England.
A spokesperson for the Division of Well being and Social Care stated: “No affected person ought to should spend 24 hours in A&E ready to be admitted to a ward.
“We are determined to end the annual winter crisis in urgent care and to cut waiting lists for emergency care, but it will take time.”
They stated “providing more care in the community” would assist guarantee fewer sufferers find yourself in A&E to start with.
The Lib Dems are campaigning for a brand new staff of “super-heads”, consisting of skilled NHS bosses, to be deployed inside struggling NHS Trusts and produce them as much as customary.
Official statistics present the entire variety of sufferers ready over 12 hours for an emergency admission in England decreased from 61,529 in January to 46,766 in March.
A few of the fall could be attributed to a post-seasonal peak from winter diseases.
Earlier evaluation by the Royal Faculty of Emergency Drugs discovered there have been virtually 14,000 deaths related to lengthy A&E stays earlier than admission in 2023.
