Top doctor warns government ‘neglecting’ old people as figures suggest thousands of A&E patients died waiting for bed

The UK's top A&E doctor has accused the government of “neglecting the oldest and sickest patients” as figures suggest a record 320 people a week may have died needlessly in A&E last year due to waits for hospital beds.

Dr Adrian Boyle, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine president, has warned that current government policy on A&E is focused on cutting waits for “cut fingers and sprained ankles” while neglecting older people, who are most likely to die and spend days on trollies.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) estimates there were more than 16,600 deaths of patients linked to long waits for a bed, an increase of a fifth on 2023 and a record since new A&E data has been published.

The figures come after the NHS’s target to see 95 per cent of patients within four hours was cut to 78 per cent for 2025/26. There is no national target for the number of people waiting 12 hours, the length of time linked to excess emergency care deaths, but last year more than 1.7 million patients waited 12 hours or more to be admitted, discharged or transferred from A&E.

Dr Boyle said the figures were “the equivalent of two aeroplanes crashing every week” and were devastating for families.

He told The Independent: “Government policy, the 78 per cent threshold, is effectively neglecting our oldest and sickest patients.

“What this is doing is leaving behind the people who are sick and need to be admitted to hospital beds, and all the focus is on performance in the urgent treatment centres, the minor injury units, and the people who can be discharged home.”

He added: “I think the public is losing confidence in the emergency care system. And we're seeing that people are staying away from emergency departments because they're frightened about suffering these long stays.”

Dr Boyle will discuss the findings at the launch of the newly formed All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Emergency Care.

He added: “I am at a loss as to how to adequately describe the scale of this figure. To give it some context, it is the equivalent of two aeroplanes crashing every week.

“It’s sobering, heartbreaking, devastating and more. Because this is so much more than just data and statistics.”

The group, chaired by Labour MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, an A&E doctor, has said it will look first at the harm caused to patients by delays and “corridor care”.

Of these, 69.2 per cent were waiting to be admitted to a ward for further care, the RCEM said.

For its excess death estimates, the RCEM uses a study of more than five million NHS patients published in the Emergency Medicine Journal (EMJ) in 2021.

This found that there was one excess death for every 72 patients that spent eight to 12 hours in an A&E department before being found a bed.

The risk of death started to increase after five hours and got worse with longer waiting times. Using this method, RCEM estimates there were 16,644 excess deaths in 2024 related to stays of 12 hours or more.

Dr Allin-Khan said: “These statistics make for sobering reading. Ever-increasing numbers of excess deaths and long wait times in our emergency departments are simply not sustainable.

“As an emergency doctor, I know exactly how stretched our A&Es across the country are, as I see it on a weekly basis on my shifts.

“The government have pledged to fix the foundations of our public services, and our A&Es must be at the front and centre of this ambition.

“There has never been an APPG for Emergency Care before, and this is exactly the vehicle needed to bring together industry experts, legislators and the Government to move things forward.

“I look forward to working with RCEM and the Government constructively to bring these numbers down, ensuring everyone receives the best quality care, with the dignity they deserve.”

The Department for Health and Social Care was approached for comment.