Tuesday 2 August 2022 01:42 PM How 12-hour A&E waits may be up to SIX TIMES more common than NHS makes out trends now
Six times more patients are waiting at least 12 hours in emergency departments than official data states, it emerged today.
Currently, health bosses only divulge stats on 'trolley waits' — the time between medics deciding a patient needs to be admitted and when they actually are given a bed.
This drastically underplays the scale of the NHS casualty crisis, given that patients may have arrived hours before their condition was deemed serious enough for further treatment.
Trusts in England are now, however, beginning to publicly declare the number of patients who have been left waiting over 12 hours from entering an emergency department.
Campaign groups warned the 'shocking' figures show the 'real state' of the country's accident and emergency service. They warned the 'gross blockages' will 'continue indefinitely' until hospital beds are freed up.
It comes amid a huge A&E crisis, which has seen record numbers face 12-hour waits in recent months and the proportion of patients seen in four hours — the NHS target — fall to all-time lows.
Ambulance response times have been hit as a result, as full hospitals scramble to find beds for 999 patients, leaving ambulances queuing outside hospitals for up to 11 hours.
More than 1,000 patients a day waited 12 hours or more in A&E for a hospital bed last year, a damning report reveals (stock image)
The analysis, carried out by the trade publication the Health Service Journal, only looked at 20 trusts, including some of England's busiest.
NHS England statistics show the organisations logged 5,309 12-hour waits between them during the most recent collection period.
More in-depth data, published by hospital executives in their own board papers, reveal the true toll was closer to the 34,000 mark for the same timespan.
At the worst-affected trusts, just a handful of waits were recorded under the official measure.
This includes Liverpool University Hospitals Foundation Trust, which registered 2,667 12-hour waits in its board papers for May but just four in the NHS England publication for the
