Up to 500 people die every week due to emergency room delays, a senior health official warned, as numbers show the number of preventable deaths is on the rise.
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said a bad flu season is exacerbating systemic problems and leading to hundreds of unnecessary deaths.
He believes it will be the worst December ever in terms of hospital bed congestion and emergency room delays, blaming bed shortages as the cause of the problem.
It comes as more NHS trusts report critical incidents due to extreme pressure from winter infections like the flu, Strep A and Covid.
Last week, more than 3,700 patients were hospitalized with the flu every day – up from 520 a day a month earlier and just 34 a day last year, the latest figures from NHS England show.
Discussing the crisis on Times Radio, D. R. Boyle said: “If you look at the charts, they are all moving in the wrong direction and I think a real reset is needed. We need to be in a position where we can’t just shrug our shoulders and say this winter has been terrible, let’s do nothing until next winter.
“We need to increase our capacity in our hospitals, we need to make sure there are alternative routes so that people are not just sent to ER and emergency rooms. We cannot continue like this, it is unsafe and unworthy.
“What we are seeing now in terms of these long waits is that there is an increase in mortality and we believe that between 300 and 500 people die every week due to delays and problems with emergency and emergency care. We really need to get this under control.
“We don’t know about the waiting time because they won’t show up in a couple of weeks. I would be surprised if they weren’t the worst we’ve seen in December.”
Waiting times for emergency services have increased significantly in recent months. In November, 37,837 people waited more than 12 hours in the emergency room for a decision to be admitted, according to NHS England. This is more than three times the number in November 2021, when an estimated 10,646 people waited over 12 hours.
At the same time, the 111 hotline received a large number of calls. The latest figures from NHS England show that NHS 111 received about 600,000 calls last week, more than two-thirds more than at the same time last year.
The pressure is also being felt in other parts of the UK, with influenza cases on the rise in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
It comes after a new analysis found that the number of preventable deaths is three times what it would have been if the hospital had been waiting for emergency care at pre-pandemic levels.
National Health Service data from Independent shows that the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in the emergency department has quadrupled since April 2019.
The analysis showed that the number of additional deaths associated with emergency care increased from 100 per week from April 2021 to just over 500 per week in October.
Source: I News
I’m Raymond Molina, a professional writer and journalist with over 5 years of experience in the media industry. I currently work for 24 News Reporters, where I write for the health section of their news website. In my role, I am responsible for researching and writing stories on current health trends and issues. My articles are often seen as thought-provoking pieces that provide valuable insight into the state of society’s wellbeing.