A week in A&E

Age UK report reveals horrors of corridor care across UK hospitals

- BY MARTIN BAGOT Health and Science Editor

A&E patients are waiting up to a week to get treatment, a charity has claimed.

Analysis by Age UK shows the number of elderly people waiting in A&E for between one and three days has increased 75-fold.

Data released under Freedom of Information laws shows there were 102,000 instances of over-65s stuck for between 24 and 72 hours in A&E, after a decision to admit them had been made, in 2024/25

In more than half of these cases, the patients were over 80.

By comparison, in 2018/19 people over the age of 65 waited between one and three days in A&E only 1,346 times.