Beds in acute NHS trusts taken by UK influenza patients in winter 2021/22 compared with winter 2022/23. Data: NHS Digital. Graphic: The Times and The Sunday Times
Beds in acute NHS trusts taken by UK influenza patients in winter 2021/22 compared with winter 2022/23. Data: NHS Digital. Graphic: The Times and The Sunday Times

By Rhys Blakely and Henry Zeffman
2 January 2023

(The Times) – As many as 500 people are dying each week because of delays in emergency NHS care, a senior doctor has said.

Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), said that a bad flu season was piling pressure on to services that were already critically overstretched.

A collapse in ambulance response times, gridlock in A&E units and soaring rates of staff turnover were contributing to avoidable deaths, he said.

“We think somewhere between 300 and 500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week,” he told Times Radio.

Heidi Hook, 3, suffering from scarlet fever and croup, had to sleep on chairs as she waited to be seen at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK on 17 December 2022. Her father, Tom Hook, wrote, “I won’t be making the obligatory end of year post about my work achievements this year. Instead, this is a photo of my sick 3-year-old daughter and her ‘bed’ in hospital at 5am. Exhausted, dehydrated, and fighting multiple illnesses, this is the best the NHS could do, 5 hours after arriving at A&E and 22 hours after we phoned for help. Every step to get to this point showed signs of failure. The call centre, the triage, pharmacy, and GP service all failed. Service failure in the NHS is real and it seems to be collapsing in front of our eyes. Do not let our government celebrate a single damn thing until this stops. No champagne receptions or nice dinners, no ermine robed pageantry. Do. Your. Job.” Record numbers of patients were being nursed in corridors in “grossly overcrowded” emergency departments. Dozens of NHS trusts have declared critical incidents in the first week of January 2023, with some forced to return to tactics last used at the height of the pandemic. Photo: The Sunday Times
Heidi Hook, 3, suffering from scarlet fever and croup, had to sleep on chairs as she waited to be seen at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK on 17 December 2022. Her father, Tom Hook, wrote, “I won’t be making the obligatory end of year post about my work achievements this year. Instead, this is a photo of my sick 3-year-old daughter and her ‘bed’ in hospital at 5am. Exhausted, dehydrated, and fighting multiple illnesses, this is the best the NHS could do, 5 hours after arriving at A&E and 22 hours after we phoned for help. Every step to get to this point showed signs of failure. The call centre, the triage, pharmacy, and GP service all failed. Service failure in the NHS is real and it seems to be collapsing in front of our eyes. Do not let our government celebrate a single damn thing until this stops. No champagne receptions or nice dinners, no ermine robed pageantry. Do. Your. Job.” Record numbers of patients were being nursed in corridors in “grossly overcrowded” emergency departments. Dozens of NHS trusts have declared critical incidents in the first week of January 2023, with some forced to return to tactics last used at the height of the pandemic. Photo: The Sunday Times

The comments will magnify concerns about the state of the health service as thousands more paramedics, nurses and doctors prepare to walk out over pay and conditions. A healthcare leader said yesterday that hospitals were under as much pressure as at the start of the pandemic, while a senior medic urged the government to declare a national major incident.

Ambulance staff are due to strike on January 11 and 23, while nurses will walk out on January 18 and 19. A ballot for industrial action by junior doctors in England will open on January 9.

While ministers hope that continuing industrial action will erode public support for the strikers, a crisis in emergency care could also rebound on the government. Health leaders are already confronting a rise in excess deaths, with Sir Chris Whitty warning that Britain faces a “prolonged period” of high death rates because people stayed away from the NHS during the pandemic or could not get treatment.

Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, has warned ministers that thousands of middle-aged people are dying of heart conditions because they did not get statins or blood pressure medicines in 2020 and 2021.

Hundreds more people a week are dying than normal, with the reasons not fully understood. Ambulance delays have also been cited by senior doctors as worsening the death toll.

Ambulances outside the Royal London Hospital in east London. In the first week of January 2023, slow response times and overwhelmed A&E units were said to be causing hundreds of avoidable deaths a week. Photo: Peter Byrne / PA
Ambulances outside the Royal London Hospital in east London. In the first week of January 2023, slow response times and overwhelmed A&E units were said to be causing hundreds of avoidable deaths a week. Photo: Peter Byrne / PA

Hit by a flu and Covid “twindemic”, dozens of hospital trusts have declared critical incidents, with record numbers of patients being treated in corridors and some departments running short of portable oxygen cylinders. The longest wait for a bed is thought to have been at Great Western Hospital, Swindon, where a patient spent 99 hours last week before a place could be found on a ward, The Sunday Times reported.

Saffron Cordery, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, said: “I think we are seeing equivalent levels of pressure [to the early months of Covid].”

Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, called the situation in urgent and emergency care “shocking” and urged the government to declare a national NHS major incident, enabling the four nations to manage demand across the UK. [more]

A&E delays ‘killing up to 500 people a week’