Hidden toll of emergency department delays

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More than 23,000 people may have lost their lives because of delays in emergency departments last year, according to a new analysis.

In total some 1.6 million people waited for longer than 12 hours in departments last year, according to information obtained by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.

The college links this to excess deaths in an analysis disputed by NHS England.

The data, obtained from a Freedom of Information request, shows that more than four times more patients had 12 hour waits than depicted by official figures. Official statistics measure 12 hour waits from the decision to admit and recorded 347,703 of these.

College president Dr Adrian Boyle told the Daily Telegraph: “These data, while shocking, are unsurprising.

“For a long-time we have known that the true scale of long waits in Emergency Departments has been hidden. Long-waiting times are associated with serious patient harm and patient deaths – the scale shown here for 2022 is deeply distressing.”