The RCP has responded to NHS England's latest performance stats, calling for NHSE to urgently publish data on corridor care.
Dr Hilary Williams, clinical vice president at the Royal College of Physicians, said: “Last month, pressure on urgent and emergency care remained exceptionally high with 2.26 million attendances in A&Es across England – the busiest August since records began in 2010. Nearly 36,000 patients endured waits of over 12 hours from the decision to admit them to hospital to their actual admission, compared with just 371 in August 2019. Behind these numbers are thousands of individual patients left waiting or receiving care in corridors, waiting rooms and other spaces not designed for care.
“The government and NHS England have repeatedly pledged to end corridor care. It has now been eight months since NHS England committed to recording data on care delivered in temporary spaces such as corridors, yet none of this has been published. We know corridor care is no longer confined to the winter months. What was once only a feature of increased demand in winter is now a permanent fixture of the NHS.
“Without transparency on the true scale of the problem, we cannot make progress to eliminate it We need to fully understand the scale of the issue in order to expand capacity, improve patient flow, protect patient safety, and ensure that corridor care is eliminated - not normalised. We call on NHS England to urgently publish its corridor care data without delay.”
The RCP is campaigning for action to end and prevent corridor care.
The RCP is asking members to share their experiences of providing corridor care over the summer in its final snapshot survey of the year. The survey closes at 11:59pm on Wednesday 17 September and takes just five minutes to complete - click here to take the survey.
The findings will be used to inform the RCP's campaign to eliminate corridor care and support clinicians and healthcare providers in maintaining patient safety when delivering care in temporary environments.