A&E attendances in England are growing twice as fast as population

Doctors have warned that the NHS needs to expand capacity to prevent services collapsing, as new figures show that demand on emergency services in England has reached a record level.

Last year saw nearly 24 million attendances in hospital accident and emergency departments across the country, an increase of 22% since 2008-09 and of 2% from 2016 to 17, while the population rose by 1% from last year, show data from NHS Digital.1

Rob Harwood, chair of the BMA’s Consultants Committee, described as “unacceptable” the 1.4% of patients in A&E who waited more than 12 hours before being admitted or discharged. Any …