A&E patients are having to wait more than 12 hours for a bed because emergency departments are so overwhelmed, medics warned today.
The NHS will face its worst winter yet, according to leading health professionals. This is due to unexpected demand and crippling staff shortages.
Dr Chris Gibbons, a clinician in Newcastle, said it had ‘become very normal’ for patients to wait seven hours for a bed in A&E, and ‘up to 12 or 13 hours on occasion’.
Shocking stats show more than 7,000 patients waited 12-plus hours to be seen in A&E in October — more than triple the number in the same month pre-Covid.
Amanda Pritchard from NHS England warned that it was possible for things to worsen before they improve.
She suggested the health service needed more doctors and nurses — not more cash — to address the deepening crisis, adding that ‘nothing works without staff’.
Dr Gibbons stated that attendances were 20 to 25% higher than in the fall of 2019. This was already busy for them.
“That has been combined with bed capacity. We’ve struggled filling gaps from sickness or isolation. Bed closures have resulted because of infections like Covid.
“This has led to huge numbers of people passing through the front door. There is not enough bed capacity for emergency admissions.
“We admit on average between 20 and 25 additional patients per day to the trust, which is a significant increase from what we admitted two years ago.”
The incident comes amid increasing numbers of reports about patients being killed in ambulances and waiting areas in hospitals as a result of delays in handover.
Despite the total A&E admissions in England being just two per cent more than one month earlier and equal to the number of people who came forward during the same month in 2019, 7,059 patients were forced to wait more than 12 hours to be seen at A&E. It is 40% higher than the record 5,024 who were forced to wait this long a month ago. This figure is five-fold higher than September 2020, and ten-fold more than that of the same month in 2019.
Left: Ms Pritchard made these comments while urging people for booster vaccinations (progress shown right), and warning that there was a’very real threat’ to the health system.
Patients who waited to seek care in the pandemic are more likely to return to the health system now that they have been afflicted.
To fix this problem, the Government spent record amounts of money on the NHS. Dr Gibbons however warned that money is not the solution to all problems.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme : ‘We do have finite supply of nursing staff and our theatre nurses here are exhausted.’
Amanda Pritchard, the NHS England chief executive, said that his comments were echos of those made by him.
“It is unfair for staff to be asked to maintain the same level or intensity of work forever…we need to continue to recruit staff.
NHS England estimates that it is short around 90,000 employees, which includes 44,000 nurses and nearly 9,000 doctors from almost every speciality.
Official data show that the NHS waiting list in England for routine hospital care has now reached 5.83million. Some 1.6million more Britons were waiting for elective surgery — such as hip and keen operations — at the end of September compared to the start of the pandemic
While the NHS has always struggled to respond quickly enough for medical emergencies of Category 2, such as strokes, severe burns, and other serious illnesses, patients have been waiting almost an hour to be able to call 99.
Categor 1 emergencies are the most life-threatening and serious. Patients have had to wait nine minutes for an ambulance. That is far more than the NHS target of seven minutes.
HM Treasury data shows the NHS received £100.4billion in 2010/11 and its budget had grown steadily until 2019. In 2020, the NHS was given £129.7billion of core funding for its usual services, which was topped up with an extra £18billion to help with the pressures from the pandemic. For 2021/22 the Treasury said the health service is set to receive £136.1billion pounds of core funding, as well as £3billion to help with the Covid recovery
In September, NHS bosses were given a £30bn handout and the Government has pledged to generate billions more each year by hiking National Insurance.
Critics warn that the money could be used to pay the salary of agency nurses and locum doctors without any official plans for increasing staffing.
While their health deteriorates, a record 5.8million people remain on NHS waiting list for surgery or hospital treatment in England.
Paramedics admit that the average time it takes to respond to stroke and heart attack patients in an ambulance is almost one hour.
Even worse, the death rate at home is on the rise by one-third since before the pandemic. Patients admitted to hospital for treatment are often discharged quicker than ever before their full recovery.
Ms Pritchard expressed empathy for patients facing long waiting periods. Hospitals are required to end waits that exceed two years before March 2019.
She stated, “We have set this as an ambition. We I believe recognize that within that scope there will be some specialty areas that are going to prove very challenging.
‘Most of those people who’ve been waiting the longest – and you know I really do sympathise with people in this position – are waiting for inpatient care.
“And that’s because we don’t have the urgent or emergency care we need at this moment.
“But it is an ambition that’s important for us because, over the past 18 month we have made clear priority to those patients most urgent.
“We must continue doing that but we should not forget those who have waited a while.”
When the NHS would “return to normal”, Ms Pritchard answered that it depends on the severity of the winter Covid surge and the number of patients who waited for care.
However, she stressed the fact that staffing shortfalls are also an issue.
Staff are the backbone of any organization. Over the last 18-months, we have witnessed our employees do amazing things under immense pressure.
“It’s unfair for staff to be asked to maintain the same intensity of work forever.
‘So there’s a number of things we’ve got to do – we’ve got to support our staff now, recognising the pressure that they are under – we’ve done things nationally like roll out dozens of mental health hubs to support staff and we’ve got health and wellbeing offers nationally to complement those locally.
“But, we need to continue recruiting more staff. International recruitment continues to play an important role in that. We have a lot more nurses and doctors training this year, more than ever before.
She said, “There needs to be a recognition of how much pressure employees are currently under, what we can do now to support them and the difficulties we will face this winter. But it also looks to the future.”
“…And this is where we must make sure we are working closely with Government and Health Education England to develop a long term workforce plan.”