Worst A&E performance in history as thousands left waiting for beds

The NHS recorded its worst A&E performance in history last month as record numbers of patients waited for a hospital bed.

Only 79.8 per cent of patients were treated within the four-hour target, down markedly on the 86.5 per cent in December 2018 and the lowest performance ever recorded by the NHS.

It was the third consecutive month where A&E performance across England was the worst ever recorded. The 95 per cent target was last hit in July 2015.

Problems were even more acute in main A&E departments, which saw 68.6 per cent of patients within four hours, also a historic low.

The overall figure is boosted by speedier care in urgent care centres and at specialist hospitals.

Almost 100,000 people waited more than four hours on a trolley last month after doctors deemed them sick enough to be transferred to a ward, compared with fewer than 60,000 a year earlier.

Flu rates being twice as high as last year and up to 800 beds a day being closed due to norovirus were blamed.

In London, the weakest performance was at Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS University Trust, which runs Queen’s in Romford and King George in Ilford, at King’s College Hospital and at Croydon hospital.

Fewer than half the patients attending the main A&E departments at BHRUT and Croydon were treated within four hours.

Across England, a total of 2,181,024 people sought emergency care in December, up 6.5 per cent on the same month a year earlier. Of these, 560,801 required a hospital bed.

Professor Stephen Powis, NHS medical director, said: “A&Es across the country are currently very busy.

The continued increase in people’s need for care underlines the need for more beds and staff across hospital and community services.”