71-fold increase in day-long A&E bed waits prompts call for NHS reform

The Liberal Democrats have called for NHS reform to bring the service “up to standard” as long waits have increased 71-fold since 2019.

A Lib Dem FOI campaign found that there had been nearly 49,000 trolley waits of 24-hours or longer last year. The party claims that only 54 of the 141 NHS Trusts provided full data reports, so this figure is likely much higher.

This is up from only 689 in 2019 and have risen dramatically since the pandemic with 2,839 in 2021 jumping to 30,921 in 2022, 40,735 in 2023 and 48,830 last year.

Pensioners reportedly are impacted the most, with an increase 76-fold the 2019 total from around 441 to 33,000, meaning that the elderly account for almost 70 per cent of long trolley waits.

The FOIs also asked what the longest trolley wait each NHS Trust has recorded in the past year was.

One patient had to wait 235 hours, the equivalent of 10 and a half days before being admitted following a decision being made.

The same trust, the James Paget University Hospitals Trust, also had the longest trolley wait for someone aged 65 or over where one pensioner waited 139 hours or almost six days before being admitted.

Trolley waits are when patients must wait longer for an admission decision because there are no available beds in A&E. The royal College of Emergency Medicine found that patients are twice as likely to die within 30 days if they are made to stay in an emergency department for longer than 12 hours compared to those who are treated quicker.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for a new “Winterproofing NHS Taskforce” made up of experienced NHS “super-heads” who will go into struggling trusts to provide expert advice.

A similar scheme was previously implemented in schools where experienced head teachers were sent to struggling schools to improve pupil performance.

Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson, Helen Morgan MP said: “The least patients deserve is the dignity to be treated in an appropriate area. Not the ramshackled waiting rooms and corridors that far too many have to suffer through for hours. That is why the Government must ensure that this is the last winter crisis anyone will experience and end corridor care by the end of this Parliament.

“The Conservatives’ beyond shameful neglect brought us to this point but the Labour government’s approach of sitting on its hands and hoping it all gets better has not survived contact with reality. Corridor care has become normalised to the point that hospitals are now advertising for specialised nurses to treat patients in hallways.

“This cannot go on any longer. Liberal Democrats are calling for a new Winterproofing taskforce, alongside a team of experienced NHS heads who can go into failing NHS Trusts and bring them up to the standard patients deserve.”

The party want “a ringfenced fund of £1.5 billion over the next four years to build resilience in hospital wards, A&E departments, ambulance services and patient discharging.”

They report: “This would allow integrated care boards and NHS Trusts to plan their budgets more efficiently to prevent winter crises, instead of just receiving emergency funding from the government at the last minute.”