Emergency care is in “dire” situation after loss of NHS beds, says royal college

The loss of 25 000 staffed hospital beds in the UK since 2010 has created a crisis in urgent and emergency care, a report has warned.

The report from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine says that the reduction in staffed beds was having a negative knock-on impact on emergency department waiting times, ambulance response times, and ambulance handovers.1

Analysis by the college shows that in April 2022 some 24 000 patients in England were delayed by 12 hours or more, from the decision to admit to admission. Elsewhere in the UK waiting times are calculated from the time of arrival to admission. In Scotland 4000 patients faced a 12 hour wait, and 11 000 patients …