The Royal College of Emergency Medicine linked long A&E waiting times to excess patient deaths
It found that in 2022 some 1.66 million people in England waited more than 12 hours in A&E until they were admitted, transferred or discharged.A standardised mortality ratio explains whether a specific population is more, less or equally as likely to die compared with the general population. An NHS England spokesperson said: ‘The cause of excess deaths is down to a number of different factors and so attributing deaths to one exact thing as the figures quoted by the RCEM attempt to do, is very unlikely to give a full or certain picture – it therefore would not be appropriate for NHSE to recognise these as fact and it is right that the experts at the ONS – as the executive branch of the statistics authority – continue to analyse excess deaths.
‘The recently published UEC Recovery Plan sets out targets to achieve a four-hour performance of 76% by March 2024, and publish accurate 12-hour waits from time of arrival.’