A senior medical leader has issued a stark warning that treating patients in hospital corridors has become a 'normalised' part of the NHS, as emergency departments across the country are 'full to bursting'.
'Howls of outrage' over preventable deaths
Dr Ian Higginson, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, stated there should be public outcry over the estimated 16,600 deaths in 2024 linked to excessively long waits for a hospital bed in A&E. This equates to roughly 320 fatalities every week.
'If we had 16,000 patients a year dying in bus crashes or in aircraft crashes, there would be such howls of outrage something would be done about it,' Dr Higginson said. He expressed frustration that these 'awful statistics' have not provoked determined action from the highest levels of government.
Staff 'run ragged' in impossible conditions
The emergency physician painted a grim picture of working conditions, explaining that staff 'can't deliver care in corridors' and are being 'run ragged' by the constant overload. He described a workforce suffering from burnout, moral injury, exhaustion, and PTSD.
'Emergency departments across the UK are in big trouble at the moment,' Dr Higginson stated. 'The main problem is that we have patients in our corridors... because there aren't enough beds in our hospitals to admit our patients to.'
He emphasised that the crisis is 'completely fixable' but requires political will, prioritisation, and leadership to make significant improvements.
A widespread and accepted failure
When asked if any hospitals avoid corridor care, Dr Higginson, a qualified GP, suggested only a handful, likely children's hospitals, might manage it. He stated the practice is now so pervasive it has become an expectation for both patients and staff, making it harder to galvanise action.
'Our leaders and politicians just accept it as normal and therefore don't have the same urgency behind it,' he warned.
Separate analysis supports this, finding that in March, almost one in five patients in emergency departments were treated in 'escalation areas' like corridors. Dr Higginson believes the situation has deteriorated since.
Nursing leaders echo the emergency
Professor Nicola Ranger, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, reinforced the warning, stating patients are 'routinely coming to harm and even dying unnecessarily'. She labelled the lack of urgency in resolving the corridor care crisis 'shocking', noting it has been over 18 months since nursing staff declared a national emergency over the issue.
She called for a fully funded action plan involving investment in beds, the nursing workforce, and crucially, social care capacity to improve patient discharge from hospitals.
Official NHS England figures for November show 50,648 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E from the decision to admit them to actually being given a bed, with some waits occurring in corridors.
An NHS England spokesperson acknowledged the situation was 'totally unacceptable' and said specialist teams were working with hospitals this winter to drive down corridor care incidents.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the situation it inherited was 'unacceptable and undignified' and it was determined to end it, citing some signs of recovery such as faster ambulance response times compared to last year.
However, Dr Higginson dismissed talk of 'green shoots of recovery' as wishful thinking, bluntly predicting a worsening trend. He criticised current efforts to resolve the hospital crisis as focusing on 'quick and easy and cheap' solutions, likening the approach to 'trying to put out a fire with buckets of water, whilst at the same time chucking fuel on it'.
