England A&E wait times led to needless deaths of up to 14,000
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According to the RCEM's calculations, around 268 people likely died each week in hospitals in England last year while waiting for up to 12 hours for a bed.
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A patient is pushed on a trolley after arriving in an ambulance outside the Royal London Hospital in the Whitechapel area of east London, on January 6, 2022. (AP)
Nearly 14,000 individuals died needlessly in England last year while awaiting treatment in A&E departments for up to 12 hours, according to a recent estimate.
According to calculations by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), derived from a comprehensive study of excess deaths and waiting times, it is estimated that approximately 268 individuals per week likely died in 2023 due to long waits in emergency departments.
The estimate was based on a study published in the Emergency Medicine Journal in 2021, which examined over 5 million NHS patients. The study revealed that for every 72 patients spending eight to 12 hours in an A&E department, there was one excess death.
The study found that the risk of death increased after five hours and got worse with longer waiting times.
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Earlier, the RCEM had estimated that around 300 to 500 excess deaths are reported in England each week in 2022, based on the same calculation. However, following a freedom of information audit of NHS trusts, the RCEM has refined its figures. This found that 65% of people waiting 12 hours or more in A&E were patients waiting for a hospital bed.
On that note, NHS data for England reveals that over 1.5 million patients waited 12 hours or longer in major emergency departments in 2023, indicating that over a million of them were awaiting a bed.
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The RCEM calculated that when focusing solely on patients awaiting admission, an average of 268 excess deaths likely occurred each week in 2023, totaling 13,919. This figure represents a decrease of 17 deaths per week compared to 2022 when a severe flu outbreak and COVID cases overwhelmed the NHS.
Dr. Adrian Boyle, the president of the RCEM, explained, “Excessively long waits continue to put patients at risk of serious harm. Small improvements in four-hour access standard performance are not meaningful when there are so many people staying more than 12 hours. Effort and money should go where the harm is greatest.”
The NHS recovery plan aimed for 76% of patients attending A&E to be admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours by March. However, data for March indicates that only 70.9% of patients were seen within that timeframe.
