This is the moment patients in a crowded A&E were told they could be waiting 13 hours to be seen, in a video which epitomises the crisis within the NHS.
Patients’ rights groups said it was ‘completely unacceptable in the 21st century’ for patients to be waiting so long, while Health Secretary Sajid Javid admitted the video was ‘not what anyone wants to see’.
As emergency services across the country near breaking point, the scenes from Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust Harlow may be just the tip of an iceberg.
Record numbers of patients are flooding back into the health service after years of delays caused by the Covid pandemic, which has seen A&E wait times reach record highs.
Senior doctors have advised that patients who are having difficulty getting an appointment with a doctor will be forced to go to emergency rooms or walk-in clinics instead.
One patient in her sixties from Oxfordshire told MailOnline that GP practices were using A&Es as a ‘triage service’, while campaign group Silver Voices said many patients ‘are only there because they can’t see a family doctor.’
Tory MP Matthew Offord told MailOnline: ‘A&E departments across the country are being placed under enormous stress and the Government is not even seeking to understand why this is happening. Patients should contact their GP first to receive timely and appropriate care.
A female nurse informs patients in the latest clip that there is no place for them to sleep in Essex Hospital’s waiting room.
You can hear her saying, “We have 170 patients in our department. There are 90 people waiting to see us at the moment.” The average wait for a doctor right now is seven and a half hours.
“I expect that some of your wait times will reach 13 hours by the time you get back from work in the morning.”
‘There are currently no beds in the trust, we’re trying to make space if we can but if people are admitted there’s a chance they’ll stay in A&E overnight.
“We will make every effort to make sure you are comfortable, but we don’t guarantee that you’ll be taken to the ward.
Harlow, UK: A nurse working for the Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust warns patients that they have no beds available and are likely to be spending the night waiting in the room.
NHS data on A&E performance in April shows a record 24,138 people were forced to wait 12 hours or more to be treated, three times longer than the NHS target and the worst figure on record
Relatives of patients at the A&E at Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust were also asked to leave because the emergency department was so busy.
This struggling hospital encourages people to leave unless they are in a serious medical emergency.
It comes as latest NHS figures show a record 24,000 people are waiting 12 or more hours in A&E every month before being seen — three times the NHS target.
Silver Voices director Dennis Reed told MailOnline that 13 hour waits were ‘completely unacceptable’ in 21st-century America.
“I’ve never heard of extremely long waits. I’ve seen them up to eight hours. But 13 hours. Never.’
He added: ‘There is a lack of access to GPs, it’s very sporadic, so A&Es are taking people who really need a doctor but can’t get one, which is resulting in A&Es being completely overloaded.
‘People only go to A&E if there is something seriously wrong with them, everyone knows the waiting times in hospitals are hours long.
‘Nobody is going to go on A&E on a whim, they are going to A&E because that’s the only place they can finally get help for their condition.’
Mr Reed called on the Government to deliver on its promise to hire 6,000 more GPs, a key pledge in the Conservative Party’s general election manifesto in 2019.
Royal College of Emergency Medicine, (RCEM), has already warned of difficulties in accessing a GP leading to a crisis within emergency departments. A report in October by the College said a lack of access to family doctors was creating ‘dangerous crowding’ in A&Es.
The April ambulance figures show that paramedic wait times fell in March, but they were still higher than any other month since records started. On average, ambulances responded to calls in category 2 (epilepsy, strokes) within 51 minutes and 22 second. This was 9 minutes and 41 seconds faster than a month ago
Topping 6.36million are now waiting in England for routine hospital treatment. NHS data shows one in nine people were in the queue for elective operations such as hip and knee replacements and cataracts surgery by March — up from 6.18m in February
NHS England has a goal to treat 85 percent of all cancer patients who are referred by their doctor within two months. However, in November 2021 the most recent available data shows that only 67.5 percent of those patients were treated in this timeframe. Although the Covid pandemic was long ago, it has only been exacerbated by disruptions in services.
The mother-in-law of a car crash patient patient who was at Harlow A&E on Monday told MailOnline the NHS was ‘clearly on its knees’.
She said: ‘My son-in-law visited A&E on the evening of June 6 2022 at approximately 4pm after being involved in a RTA [road traffic accident].
“He was in great pain when he heard the nurse announce that he had to leave. She was verbally molested by others. Others verbally abused her.
Her son-in law was in an accident involving three cars and she revealed that he was in pain in his neck, back and arm.
Following hearing that it might take 12 hours for him to get home, he chose to head home. He has been referred to an urgent X-ray.
Stephanie Lawton is chief operating officer of The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust. She stated that there was a high demand currently for emergency care services. There has also been a marked increase in emergency department visits.
“Our teams strive to diagnose and treat patients as efficiently and quickly as possible, reducing delays and prioritising the most urgent cases.
‘The NHS 111 is open to all members of the public. This service provides advice and healthcare in cases that are not urgent. Please call 999 for life-threatening emergency situations and go to the emergency department for more urgent cases.
Latest NHS England data shows 2million people in England were treated in A&E departments in April – on par with the highest number ever.
Just 70 per cent of people were seen within the health service’s own four-hour target — the second-lowest rate since records began in 2010.
A total of 131.905 people waited more than four hours after March’s admission decision.
24138 people were made to wait longer than 12 hours, the most ever. A wider crisis in the health system is also brewing.
One in nine (6.4 million) people were currently waiting for elective procedures such as cataract surgery and hip and knee replacements.
There are now 306,000 who have been waiting for more than a year for their operation and 16,796 have been seeking treatment for more than two years.
The waiting time for ambulances is also record-low, with patients suffering from heart attacks waiting on average over an hour to be seen by 999 dispatchers.
People who delay coming forward in the midst of a pandemic and staffing crisis are two major causes for this unprecedented situation.
But analysis published last month found that millions of visits to hospital accident and emergency units in the past year may have been due to people being unable to see their GP.
A patient in her 60s from Oxfordshire, who wished to remain anonymous, told MailOnline: ‘The GP surgeries are using A&E as a triage service. It is no longer possible to see a GP in person.
“If you call the surgery, you will be put on hold. You’ll hear a constant pre-recorded message saying that appointments were being cut back due to an ongoing pandemic. Then you’re told to hang up to fill out an electronic Consult form.
These tickboxes online forms will redirect you to urgent medical attention in almost all cases. When someone is truly in need, how do they choose?
‘If by some miracle you do finally get through on the phone, and all of the ‘appointments’ haven’t gone, they inform you that the doctor won’t see you face-to-face anyway and will call you back instead – and if you need to see someone urgently to go to A&E. This is a never-ending cycle.
“I do not call the doctor unless absolutely necessary. No-one in their right mind wants to sit in A&E for 13 hours just to see a doctor, but they are being left with very little choice.
‘No doubt there are many people in A&E who don’t need to be there, but I am fed up with all patients being painted as timewasters.’
Research by health watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found almost one in five A&E patients surveyed had resorted to emergency departments because they couldn’t get advice or treatment elsewhere.
Research found that around 35% said they didn’t have appointments and 30% couldn’t access or get through the service.
Access to GPs was the reason for 4.7 million visits to emergency and hospital departments.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said late last year this was causing ‘dangerous crowding’ in A&Es which is ‘unsafe and unconscionable and threatens patient safety’.
Tens of millions of appointments with GPs were cancelled during Covid to allow doctors to focus on the virus. This led directly into a boom in post-pandemic demand.
Patients are finding it difficult to get to a GP, as the services have failed to rebound. Only half of visits to GPs take place face-toface.
In England, however, 1,500 more fully trained family physicians are employed than there were five years ago.
Different figures reveal that not all areas have one doctor for every 2500 patients.