Exclusive: Analysis of NHS data shows rise in patients ‘stranded’ in beds as flu crisis hits and resident doctors’ strikes loom
Hospitals in England face dangerous overcrowding this winter because even more patients than last year are “stranded” in a bed, according to an analysis of NHS figures.
The findings come as the health service struggles to cope with the early onset of its usual winter crisis driven by a crippling “flu-nami” and the NHS in England is bracing itself for a five-day strike by resident doctors starting on Wednesday.
Hospitals will have fewer beds available this winter than usual because “delayed discharges” – beds occupied by people who are medically fit to leave, but have nowhere to go – have been even worse in the run-up to the cold season that they were last year, research by the Health Foundation has found.
Senior doctors and NHS leaders said the lack of beds identified by the thinktank would make an already “truly shocking” situation this winter harder still for hospitals. They said it would lead to ambulance queues building up outside A&E departments, patients facing long waits to be seen, widespread “corridor care”, an increased spread of the flu virus – and even greater risk that seriously ill patients would die because of delays in finding them a bed.
