ALMOST a fifth of patients in emergency departments are being cared for in makeshift set-ups such as corridors, new research has warned.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s (RCEM) Trainee Emergency Research Network analysed five snapshots taken from 165 A&Es in March this year.

It found 17.7 per cent of patients, (over 10,000 people), were receiving care in “escalation areas,” such as corridors, waiting rooms, and cubicles.

RCEM president Dr Ian Higginson said the study “reinforces that the shameful practice of corridor care is endemic in emergency departments in the UK.

“Just this week, one member told us of a patient having to wait two days for a bed in their department.”

He warned that for every 72 patients who wait between eight and 12 hours before admission, there is one excess death.

“This should not be happening in a wealthy country,” he said.

With the research based on data taken out of peak season, Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr Tony O’Sullivan said it “confirms the brutal truth: corridor care is not only a winter pressure; it’s a year-round failure of political will. 

“Thousands of patients, many of them frightened, elderly or vulnerable, are being treated in spaces never designed for care, while staff do the impossible under intolerable pressure. 

“National guidance says corridor care is unacceptable. So does basic decency. The government must urgently restore bed capacity, rebuild staffing, and fund the NHS to meet demand.” 

British Medical Association council chair Dr Tom Dolphin said: “Doctors are treating patients in corridors, cupboards and waiting rooms not because it is acceptable but because there is nowhere else for them to go. 

“This strips patients of privacy and dignity and forces staff to work in spaces that are not clinically safe.

“The pressures that are producing corridor care have been building for years and long predate any industrial action. 

“These unsafe conditions, and the lack of investment that created them, are exactly what has driven doctors to take industrial action in the first place.

“It is the failure to fund enough staff, beds and community services that has pushed the NHS to this point, not the actions of a workforce trying to restore safe and sustainable care.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Corridor care is unacceptable, undignified, and has no place in our NHS.

“That is why we will be publishing corridor waiting figures for the first time, so we can take the steps needed to eradicate it from our health service. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

“It will take time to turn around the shocking situation we inherited, but we are already seeing green shoots of recovery, with ambulances arriving 10 minutes faster to stroke and heart attack patients than last year and handovers also almost 10 minutes quicker.”