A new report has been released suggesting that over 1,000 patients a day are spending 12 hours or longer waiting to be seen in A&E.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) released figures showing that in 2021 some 1,047 patients a day, on average, were waiting 12 hours or longer from their time of arrival.

The College raised concerns over “alarming” levels of patients in emergency departments as it described current data on 12-hour waits as the “tip of the iceberg”.

It said that levels of “crowding” in emergency departments “indicate that the health service is unable to meet the needs of patients with the current levels of resource and capacity”.

Official figures show that, in March, more than 20,000 patients spent more than 12 hours in emergency departments after doctors had decided they were sick enough to warrant a hospital stay.

The Oldham Times: The figures came from Freedom of Information requests to hospital trusts in England (PA)The figures came from Freedom of Information requests to hospital trusts in England (PA)

But the RCEM said that the current 12-hour wait figures are a “gross under-representation of the reality” as “far greater numbers of patients experience extreme waits of 12 hours or more from their time of arrival”.

What were the figures?

Freedom of Information requests were sent to hospitals in England by the RCEM to discover how many patients had waited 12 hours or longer from their time of arrival at an emergency department.

In the end, 74 out of 118 hospital trusts replied to this.

At these trusts, 381,991 patients (4.3%) experienced a 12-hour delay from their time of arrival in the department in 2021.

The report states that the situation is “much worse than official figures indicate”.

The authors said that, in 2020/21, the number of patients waiting for 12 hours after arrival in A&E was 21 times higher than the reported figure of those waiting for 12 hours or longer after a decision was taken to admit them to a ward.

The Oldham Times: The RCEM has called for the 12-hour wait data to be published monthly as part of the NHS performance figures (PA)The RCEM has called for the 12-hour wait data to be published monthly as part of the NHS performance figures (PA)

The official statistics show that 14,150 people waited for 12 hours after a decision was taken to admit them in 2020/21.

But the RCEM said that some 302,784 people waited for 12 hours or more after arriving in an emergency department.

In 2019/20, this figure was 522,720.

Dr Adrian Boyle, vice president of the RCEM, called for the 12-hour data measured from the time of arrival to be published alongside monthly NHS performance figures.

He said: “These figures are staggering and show the critical state of the urgent and emergency care system.

“They also make clear that measuring 12-hour waits from decision to admit masks the reality facing patients and staff.

“Clearly, it is misleading to measure 12-hour waits in this way, and it is detrimental to staff efforts to improve A&E waiting times.”