Brief by Shorts91 Newsdesk / 12:22pm on 01 Apr 2024,Monday International
More than 250 patients a week in England may have died unnecessarily last year due to very long waits for a bed in Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments, new estimates suggest. A study by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) indicates that patients are put at risk by spending hours in A&E, especially after a decision has been made to admit them. The NHS aims for 76% of A&E patients to be seen within four hours, but only 70.9% were seen within that timeframe in March. The risk of death increases after five hours, with over 1.5 million patients waiting 12 hours or more in 2023.
