'Normalised' hospital corridor care must end, says top doctor

Emergency departments across the UK are in big trouble due to the way corridor care has been “normalised”, a leading medic has warned.

- Rachel Hall

Dr Ian Higginson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), said there should be “howls of outrage” over deaths linked to long waits, with just a few UK hospitals managing to avoid caring for patients on trolleys in corridors.

Patients are now “not surprised” to be cared for in a corridor because the problem is so widespread - yet doctors “can’t deliver care” this way, Higginson told the Press Association.

The RCEM said more than 16,600 patient deaths last year were linked to very long waits in A&E-equivalent to about 320 deaths a week.

"If we had 16,000 patients a year dying in bus crashes or aircraft crashes or anywhere else there would be such howls of outrage something would be done about it," Higginson said. "And yet, we can’t understand why those awful statistics don’t provoke really determined action at the highest level across governments."