A shocking increase in 12-hour A&E waits has been uncovered in new analysis of NHS data.
Nearly one in 10 patients waited that long to be admitted in the first week of this month, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has found.
Forty NHS sites participated in its 2021/22 Winter Flow Project, to measure the time from someone arriving at A&E to being admitted.
Official NHS England data only measures the time from a decision to admit, to being admitted to an available bed.
Some 6,582 patients spent over half a day in an emergency department waiting for admission, accounting for 9.2% of all attendances.
The number of 12-hour delays is up by 12% on the previous week, despite attendances increasing by only 0.37%.
"RCEM President Dr Katherine Henderson, said: “While attention is understandably focused on the ever increasing waiting list for elective care, there is a serious emergency in emergency care that is putting significant numbers of lives at risk.
“Waits for admission beyond five hours increase the chances of a patient dying. This is only a small sample but since October there has now been over 100,000 12-hour delays across the 40 UK sites participating.
“We cannot hope to fully address this problem, which we know kills people, without fully acknowledging the scale of it.
"But we know that the published figures for England – which measure from decision to admit to admission – are the tip of the iceberg, and not in line with the way devolved nations publish this data.
“This must change immediately to ensure that these life threatening waits are fully exposed and understood, helping us to prevent them long term.
“At this stage last year there were 6,213 more beds in service. The drive for capacity can only go so far with limited resources.”
