A&E wait times of over four hours to affect a million more people

Analysis by the British Medical Association (BMA) predicts that over four million patients could be waiting more than four hours to be seen by 2020, The Guardian has reported.

The BMA has said that a million more patients could face waits of over four hours in NHS A&E wards in England by 2019-20 in the absence of urgent action to address rising demand.

It predicts that the number of people attending emergency wards and waiting more than four hours to be treated could reach 3.7 million in three years’ time, up from 2.6 million in the year ending September 2017.

If accurate, the BMA’s forecast would mean 84.8 per cent of patients being seen within four hours between October 2019 and September 2020, down from 89 per cent in 2016-17.

The union also predicts that ‘trolley waits’, where patients are left waiting more than four hours for a hospital bed after a decision to admit, will triple by 2019-20, from 566,000 last year to 1.78 million.

Significant increases are forecast over the next year, with the number of people waiting over four hours at A&E predicts to hit 2.95 million by September 2018, and the number of trolley waits expected to rise 44 per cent to 816,000.

Leading doctors have said that already overstretched A&Es in England could struggle to cope in the event of a major flu outbreak. They have cited high bed occupancy rates caused by lack of funding and staff shortages as contributing pressures.

There could be as many as 300,000 people a month waiting more than four hours at A&Es by December, according to the BMA analysis. This could exceed 400,000 by 2020, meaning over a fifth of patients attending emergency wards waiting more than four hours. The highest monthly figure in 2016-27 was 281,612, in January.

The problems are being partly driven by a surge in attendances, predicted to hit 23.8 million over the next 12 months, and 24.5 million in 2019-20.

Chaand Naipaul, BMA chair of council, said: “These alarming figures show the scale of the challenge facing the NHS. As demand increases and waiting times rise, many more patients are left waiting longer for care. It is clear from this analysis that we need urgent action to close the gap between investment and rising demand on the NHS.

“With the budget less than a month away, the government needs to address the fact we spend about £10 billion less per year on health that other leading European economies. Plugging this gap could fund, for example, another 35,000 hospital beds or 10,000 doctors, which could transform patient care.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “Doing nothing was never an option for the NHS – we have given an extra £8 billion investment by 2022, including £2 billion for social care and £100 million for A&E and last year, the NHS treated 2.2 million more people in A&E within four hours than it did a decade ago.

“The BMA is wrong to say we spend less per year on health than other leading countries; in fact spending on the NHS is in line with other European countries and our health service has, once again, been independently judged to be the best and most efficient health system in the world.”