Safety fears as more elderly stuck in A&E

SENIOR doctors have warned of an “alarm- ing threat to patient safety” after figures showed more than one million elderly peo- ple endure long waits in A&E - and the older they are, the more likely they are to experi- ence it.

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A report from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) shows that rising numbers of elderly and frail people are stuck in A&E, often on trolleys in corridors.

Figures obtained by RCEM via the Freedom of Information Act show that 1.15 mil lion people aged 60 and over waited more than 12 hours to be transferred, admitted or discharged in England's major A&E departments last year.

This is a jump from the 991,068 in 2023 and about three times the figure for 2019, when 305,619 were affected. The research also found that the likelihood of experiencing a 12-hour wait in an emergency department increases with the age of the patient.