UK Government Urged to ‘Get a Grip’ on NHS Emergency Care Amid Reports of Hundreds of Deaths

An undated image of an unidentified hospital in the United Kingdom. Victoria Jones/PA

The UK government has been urged to “get a grip” on the crisis in England’s hospitals amid claims that up to 500 people per week are dying because of delays with emergency care.

The president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), Dr. Adrian Boyle, told Times Radio: “What we’re seeing now in terms of these long waits is being associated with increased mortality, and we think somewhere between 300–500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week. We need to actually get a grip of this.”

More than a dozen National Health Service (NHS) trusts and ambulance services declared critical incidents over the Christmas and New Year period, and 1 in 5 ambulance patients in England waited for more than an hour to be admitted to a hospital.

Ian Higginson, vice president of the RCEM, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme, “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 long-standing 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.”

Education Minister Robert Halfon told the BBC: “I’m absolutely clear that the prime minister treats this as a top priority. We’re increasing the NHS capacity by the equivalent of 7,000 beds, spending an extra 500 million pounds to speed up hospital discharge and improve capacity.”

The Liberal Democrats’ health spokeswoman Daisy Cooper called on the government to recall Parliament to deal with the NHS crisis.

“This is a life-or-death situation for huge numbers of patients,“ Cooper said. ”The NHS is collapsing in front of our eyes whilst the prime minister and health secretary are nowhere to be seen.

“This is a national crisis, and the country will never forgive the government if they refuse to recall Parliament whilst hundreds of people die in parked ambulances or hospital corridors. Nobody should lose a loved one because the government was asleep on the job.”

Referring to the estimates of up to 500 deaths per week, Higginson said: “These are real figures and ... this is a real problem. It’s happening now in our emergency departments.”

The figures he referred to appeared to be based on research published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, which calculated that every 82 patients whose hospital admission is delayed by more than six hours lead to one death within 30 days.

“We have really good evidence that has been accumulated over decades that long waits in emergency departments are associated with poor outcomes for patients," Higginson said.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay arrives in Downing Street ahead of a Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on Dec. 13, 2022. Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images

‘It’s Pretty Dreadful Out There for ... Patients’

Higginson said emergency department staff were having to treat patients in corridors.

“It’s pretty dreadful out there for doctors, nurses, other practitioners in emergency departments, but importantly it’s dreadful for our patients, I’m afraid,” he said.

“What we’re seeing is an amplification of the sorts of stuff we’ve been hearing about for a while now, where patients are waiting a long time for ambulances. Once they get an ambulance, they might be waiting outside our emergency departments for a long time to actually get in our doors.

“Once they finally make it through our doors there are long waits inside our departments to be seen. And we’re having to treat patients in all sorts of unsatisfactory places, such as corridors or areas that simply aren’t meant to house patients.”

Health Secretary Steve Barclay has kept a low profile over the festive period, but he did appear on Twitter on Dec. 30 to praise NHS staff who were recognised in the New Year’s Honours List.

“Congratulations to all those in the NHS & social care being honoured this year, including nurses, GPs, pharmacists, volunteers and care home managers,”  Barclay wrote on Twitter. “Thank you for your hard work and dedication.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email, “We recognise the pressures the NHS is facing following the impact of the pandemic and are working tirelessly to ensure people get the care they need, backed by up to  14.1 billion pounds in additional funding for health and social care over the next two years.

“This winter, the government has provided an extra 500 million pounds to speed up hospital discharge and free up beds, and the NHS is creating the equivalent of at least 7,000 more beds to help reduce A&E waits and get ambulances back on the road.

“We’re supporting and growing the health and social care workforce through training and recruitment campaigns at home and abroad, and there are record numbers of staff working for the NHS, including 9,300 more nurses and almost 4,000 more doctors compared to September 2021.”

PA Media contributed to this report.