New NHS figures show nearly 3,000 patients a day in England experienced corridor care in May, exposing the scale of an issue ministers call unacceptable.
Nearly 3,000 patients a day in England were cared for in hospital corridors or other makeshift areas instead of a ward bed in May, newly published figures show.
The data, released for the first time, gives a clearer measure of a practice ministers have described as unsafe and unacceptable. Corridor care is counted when patients spend more than 45 minutes being treated in places such as corridors, side rooms or car parks, or when they are left on or near wards without a bed.
The daily average represented about 3% to 4% of patients arriving at hospital through A&E. The figures show 2,241 patients a day, on average, experienced corridor care while in A&E, while a further 669 were affected on or near wards elsewhere in hospitals.
NHS analysis found the problem was concentrated in a relatively small number of organisations: 20 trusts accounted for more than half of corridor care cases in A&E, while 20 trusts accounted for more than two-thirds of cases elsewhere in hospitals.
Patients and staff described long waits, distress and care being delivered in conditions with little privacy. One woman, identified as Suzanne, said her mother, who is in her 80s, had spent more than 24 hours waiting in a corridor on each of five visits to A&E in the East Midlands this year. “Mum was one trolley in a sea of trolleys,” she said.
Another patient, Kathy, said she waited 36 hours in a chair in a hospital in the East of England after being sent in by her GP with a suspected eye infection. She was later told her blurred vision was caused by a brain tumour.
Health Secretary James Murray said the practice “has no place in our NHS” and said publishing the figures would help identify where pressure is greatest and where trusts need support. Ministers have pledged to eradicate corridor care by 2029.
NHS England said May had been particularly busy because of the heatwave, even though the month is not normally associated with the most severe hospital pressures.
Royal College of Nursing general secretary Prof Nicola Ranger called the figures “alarming” and said they showed unsafe and undignified care was widespread. Siva Anandaciva, of The King’s Fund, said publication of the data was a positive step but warned that long-standing data on waiting times had not, by itself, stopped delays from rising.
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