A QUARTER of ambulance patients wait 30 minutes outside A&E — with one in ten stuck for more than an hour.
Hospitals are too busy and blocked up to take them as staff battle dire difficulties even before Omicron and the winter really bite.
Delays in ambulances often top the stated 15-minute maximum while a record 10,500 A&E patients faced 12-hour-plus waits on trolleys for a bed last month — double September’s figure.
Dr Katherine Henderson, of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “Every part of the patient journey through emergency care is broken.
“The NHS is in a precarious position before Omicron and this cannot go on.”
Under safety rules, ward occupancy should not exceed 85 per cent but the current average is 94 per cent, the NHS says.
At a third of hospitals it is 96 per cent while 14 NHS trusts were 99 per cent full last week. But about 10,000 of the 90,000 beds are filled by those well enough to leave but who cannot because of a care shortage.
Dr Simon Walsh, of the British Medical Association, said: “Problems in emergency departments are dire. Hospitals simply don’t have the capacity to cope.
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“Problems discharging patients and moving people to wards have a knock-on effect leading to delays in emergency departments and ambulance services.”
Meanwhile, the surgery wait list hit 5.98million in November, the 17th monthly rise in a row.
NHS medical director Professor Stephen Powis said: “NHS staff are addressing the Covid backlog in the face of sustained pressure on emergency care.”
