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Record 518,000 trolley waits of 12 hours or more last year – up 400-fold in less than a decade
Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP has urged Wes Streeting to produce an emergency plan to tackle “shocking and dangerous” A&E wait times as the government “looks to be asleep at the wheel”.
Last year there were a record 518,000 waits of 12 hours or longer in A&E from a decision to admit, research by the Liberal Democrat has revealed. Staggeringly, that is nearly 400-times more 12 hour waits than 2015’s figure of 1,306.
The figures also revealed a sharp rise of more than 100,000 12 hour trolley waits on 2023’s figure of 415,000, a jump of 25%. Prior to the pandemic in 2019 there were just 8,272 trolley waits of 12 hours or longer. Last year that figure rose 63-fold to 518,000.
In December alone, 54,000 patients waited 12 hours or longer in A&E from a decision to admit, up 23-fold on the December 2019’s figure of just 2,356.
Long waits at A&E are extremely dangerous and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that in 2023 14,000 deaths were associated with long waits in A&E.
Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care Spokesperson Helen Morgan MP called the figures “shocking” and said the new government “looks to be asleep at the wheel”. The Party is calling on the Health Secretary to come forward with an emergency plan to tackle this crisis to protect patients from this ongoing crisis.