A shocking report from a European country… Hundreds of patients die every week in queues

England – The Royal College of Emergency Medicine revealed that more than 250 patients died every week in England last year due to long waits in emergency departments, despite being admitted to hospitals for treatment.

Calculations conducted by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) and shared with the PA news agency indicate that patients are being harmed by spending hours in the emergency room, especially after a decision has been made to admit them.

The NHS Recovery Plan set a target for March, which is for 76% of patients who come to the emergency room to be admitted and transferred from hospital within 4 hours.

But data for March shows that only 70.9% of patients were seen during that time frame.

In February, the number of people who waited more than 12 hours in emergency departments after the decision to recognize actual admission was issued reached 44,417 people.

As for the new mortality estimates, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) conducted a very large study of more than 5 million patients that was published in the Emergency Medicine Journal (EMJ) in 2021.

The study found that there was one death for every 72 patients who spent between 8 and 12 hours in the accident and emergency department. The risk of death begins to increase after 5 hours, and gets worse with longer waiting periods.

In 2022, RCEM said it believed between 300 and 500 deaths were likely to occur in England each week, but it has since conducted an audit of NHS trust information to improve this figure.

This found that 65% of people waiting 12 hours or more were patients waiting for a hospital bed.

NHS England data shows that more than 1.5 million patients waited 12 hours or more in major emergency departments in 2023, meaning more than a million of those were waiting for a bed.

Source: “Independent”