Revealed: Britain’s WORST A&Es – where patients wait 12 hours to see a medic, as hospitals buckle under strain of winter ‘quad-demic’
NHS patients in some areas of the UK are waiting at least 12 hours in accident and emergency departments before they see 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 for 12 hours.
At University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust the number of patients was 1,853 — equivalent to about one in 20 of all of those seen in November.
Meanwhile, other hospitals in the country only saw half of their patients needing urgent care within four hours last month, which is far below the health service’s target of 76 per cent.
It comes amid alerts from senior medics about hospitals ‘full to bursting’ with patients as the health service grapples with a ‘quad-demic’ of winter bugs flu, Covid, norovirus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Dr Ian Higginson from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) warned yesterday that the situation facing patients needing treatment in the NHS was ‘pretty grim’.
He explained that patients are being forced to wait in corridors owing to bed shortages, with ambulances queuing up outside, and told of an increased risk to the health of staff.
Dr Higginson told Sky News: ‘Normally, just before Christmas we’d expect a bit of a lull. So I’m afraid things are looking pretty difficult for our patients and for our staff.
Senior medics have issued dire warnings that hospitals are ‘full to bursting’ with patients as the health service grapples with a ‘quad-demic’ of winter bugs like flu. Stock image
‘We simply don’t have enough beds in our hospitals for patients who are admitted as emergencies.
‘We don’t have enough staff for those beds and we don’t have any headroom at all.’
Now, a Mailonline analysis of NHS data has revealed the A&E departments in England where you can expect the longest delays.
As well as Shrewsbury and Birmingham, University Hospitals Of Derby And Burton NHS Foundation Trust also had striking numbers of 12 hour waits — about one in every 25 patients.
For four hour waits, Shrewsbury And Telford had the worst performance in the nation with 49 per cent of patients not seen in this period.
In contrast, The Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust had the best performance of any major A&E department with just over 88 per cent of patients seen with four hours.
This trust was also one of a handful of major A&Es that avoided any 12 hour waits for 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 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 last month’s data, which was the busiest November on record, demonstrated the strain the health service was under as it faced the pressures of what has been dubbed a ‘quad-demic’.
Speaking at the time, the NHS’s national medical director Professor Sir Stephen Powis, said: ‘The tidal wave of flu cases and other seasonal viruses hitting hospitals is really concerning for patients and for the NHS – the figures are adding to our “quad-demic” worries.’
The latest NHS data suggests some A&Es in England could be in a better position to deal with an influx of emergency attendances than others. Stock image
Under health service guidelines, 76 per cent of casualty patients should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of being seen
The last weekly winter report by the health service, published just days before Christmas, showed one in 18 beds in the NHS was currently being occupied by one of these pathogens.
Recently, nurses and doctors have been briefed about how to treat patients in corridors. But the RCEM branded the guidance as ‘normalising the dangerous’.
The latest data comes on the back of annual NHS figures, published earlier this year, that showed a staggering 440,000 patients in England were forced to wait over 12 hours in A&E.
This represented an increase of 30,000 on the previous year. By comparison, just 1,200 waited this long a decade ago.
The annual data also showed two thirds of A&E attendees at England’s worst performing hospitals were also left waiting more than four hours for care in the year to March 2024.
Full trust-by-trust results for the annual data, published in September, can be viewed via our interactive search table above.
