‘NHS worst ever seen’ as thousands of ‘overspill’ patients not counted

The NHS crisis is even worse than feared because thousands of ‘overspill patients’ left to wait in corridors and even gyms are not included in official statistics, the head of the Royal College of Physicians has said.
John Dean, clinical lead of the RCP also said the hospital crisis is the worst he and senior colleagues have ever witnessed – even compared to 2020-2021 during the height of the covid pandemic.
The college will be writing to Health Secretary Wes Streeting asking that all patients, not just those in hospital wards, be included in the official record and that new guidance is issued to ensure ‘overspill’ patients receive proper treatment.
He said: “This is the worst I have ever seen. The whole system from GP, hospital care and care in the community is at breaking point.”
He added: “Hospitals are working over capacity but thousands of patients a week who are not in the wards and being put in temporary areas are not included in the official statistics. This unsafe situation has become the norm but is unacceptable.
“I have been working in hospitals for 42 years and it is worse this year than I have ever seen it and many colleagues say the same. People who are not in appropriate wards are more likely to stay in hospital longer, are less likely to get appropriate care and more likely to deteriorate and are less likely to get appropriate care. This means hospital beds are less likely to become available holding ambulances up.”

Dr Mashkur Khan, RCP regional advisor for south London said: “Hospital A@E’s are now the only place where the lights are on because GP services have been shot to pieces. A bit of winter crisis money will not solve this. We have patients sitting in corridors, or in the wrong wards and even in our physiotherapy gym because we have no idea what else to do with them. This is not safe and patients have no dignity and privacy.”

He added: “The burden of flu and covid is a red herring which the government is hiding behind. We’ve had respiratory viruses every winter for millenia. This is about a whole system collapse and we have been firefighting for decades. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.”

Dr Khan, a consultant geriatrician added: “The elephant in the room is social care. Without a proper social care system patients are more likely to end up in hospital and many cannot be discharged when they should be because there is nowhere appropriate for them to go.”

The news comes as long ambulance handover delays – which take crews off the road while they queue outside hospitals – hit record levels last week. This often leads to long ambulance response times.

There were an average of 2,834 hour-long handover delays every day in the week to 4 January, according to the latest NHS winter data. This is the highest since records began.

Last year also saw a record 518,000 trolley waits of 12 hours or more – up 400-fold in less than a decade. Prior to the pandemic in 2019 there were just 8,272 trolley waits of 12 hours or longer, figures released last week by the Liberal Democrats show. The Lib Dem’s also released figures showing there have been a total of 417,220 bed days taken up by patients that were well enough to be discharged this winter – the equivalent to just under one in eight hospital beds. This has cost the NHS £165 million or £4.8 million a day.

An NHS spokesperson said: “The NHS is facing unprecedented demand for services, but we remain clear that caring for patients in temporary spaces is not acceptable and should never be considered as standard.

“A&E capacity and patient flow through hospitals have however both been severely impacted by record levels of demand this winter, such as the increase in flu admissions and the thousands of beds being taken up by patients ready for discharge.

“NHS staff continue to provide the safest possible care for patients, including an expansion of same day emergency care and more care in the community.

“All NHS trusts will begin to report a count of the number of patients who receive care within temporary escalation spaces via a new metric in NHS England’s two existing situation reports from January 25.”