NHS A&E crisis is killing 500 patients every week: Health chiefs warn of 'worst ... trends now
Up to 500 patients could be dying every week because of the A&E crisis wreaking havoc on the NHS, a senior medic warned today.
Pressures on the health service have resulted in 'Dickensian overcrowding', emergency department workers say, as they battle one of the worst winters on record.
Around a dozen and ambulance trusts have already declared critical incidents, meaning they can no longer provide safe levels of care.
Saffron Cordery, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, said the crisis is 'equivalent' to the start of the Covid pandemic.
This map shows the NHS organisations which have declared critical incidents within the last few days
NHS England data today showed that an average of 63,000 staff were off work every day in the week to Christmas (red line). Around 8,000 of the absences were due to Covid (blue line)
Ambulance handover delays peaked on December 19 with over 3,000 patients forced to wait over an hour in the back of an emergency vehicle unable to be offloaded to a hospital bed
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), said hundreds of patients are dying while they wait in overpacked emergency wards.
He told Times Radio: 'We think somewhere between 300 and 500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week.'
Amid questions around the numbers, Ian Higginson, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, hit out at any attempt to 'discredit' the warnings.
Mr Higginson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the RCEM figures were more than a 'guesstimate'.
He said: 'We have really good evidence that has been accumulated over decades that long waits in emergency departments are associated with poor outcomes for patients.
'These are real figures and I worry that we're going to hear attempts to spin and manipulate this data and discredit it.
He added: 'I think if we hear that, we've got to say no — that is spin. This is a real problem. It's happening now in our emergency departments.
'What we've been hearing over the last few days is that the current problems are all due to Covid or they're all due to flu, or that this is complex, you mustn't jump to conclusions — all that sort of stuff.
'If you're at the front line, you know that this is a longstanding problem. This isn't a short-term thing.
'The sort of things we're seeing happen every winter, and it still seems to come as a surprise to the NHS.'
The RCEM believes this month will be the worst December for hospital bed occupancy and A&E waiting times on record.
Dozens of patients are being cared for in corridors, and some are being forced to endure 40 hours in A&E, internal NHS documents revealed last week.
Some staff are being forced to ask seriously ill patients to monitor their own vital signs, Dr Boyle said.
Dr Rachel Clarke, an A&E doctor based in Oxfordshire, told the Daily Mirror: 'In 14 years as a doctor I've never known such horrific conditions.
'Patients dying on trolleys with zero dignity. Or screaming and moaning in corridors. Dickensian overcrowding, total implosion. Despair. Weeping staff.'
Some hospitals have reported that they are running out of oxygen, while one patient was forced to wait 99 hours for a bed and a child had to sleep on a plastic chair.
NHS England data show an average of 1,939 people with flu were in hospital each day last week. It was up 67 per cent on the 1,162 recorded the previous week and 57 times higher
