Although the government is finally recognising what a huge problem corridor care is, the British Medical Association does not believe that it goes far enough.
At the beginning of March, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) updated its guidance for corridor care, the blight on emergency departments that is getting worse rather than getting better. It was followed at the end of the month by a letter from NHS England, which includes a new definition of corridor care and a duty on trusts in England to begin collecting data on incidences of corridor care, which will be published in May.
Finally, the government is stepping up. Expert teams are being deployed to the most affected hospitals, providing bespoke clinical support to leadership staff, as government data shows the majority of corridor care is concentrated in a small number of NHS trusts.
The Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) team are supporting leaders in the most affected hospitals to learn from those NHS trusts which have already made significant inroads into reducing corridor care this year – all at a time when significant progress is being made across urgent and emergency care, including the shortest A&E waiting times in four years and ambulance response times the fastest for half a decade despite record demand.
To further tackle pressures in busy hospital departments, the government can now confirm the locations for 40 new and expanded urgent care sites across England. The programme, backed by £215.5 million, includes ten new urgent treatment centres (UTCs), four expanded UTCs, five new same-day emergency care (SDEC) services and 21 expanded SDECs, providing a significant increase in frontline capacity. This, it hopes, will help ease pressure on A&E departments by ensuring more patients are treated in the right setting. Reducing waiting times and improving patient flow through hospitals to tackle corridor care.
Unprecedented pressure
“Emergency departments across the country remain under unprecedented pressure and overcrowding, so we welcome [health secretary Wes] Streeting’s renewed pledge to tackle corridor care and for his engagement with the College to date,” said Salwa Malik, vice president membership for the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
At the end of April, Streeting told College members that corridor care should never be tolerated in emergency departments.
“I am clear: corridor care is not normal, it is not acceptable, it should never be tolerated, and I am determined to end it,” he said.
The British Medical Association (BMA) remains still to be convinced that the government measures will help, calling them “a small step forward”.
“Any doctor working in emergency care will have had shifts where they have left the hospital to go home for the night, and returning the next morning to see the same patients in waiting rooms or in corridors. And as we see here, in some cases, these patients are still waiting for a third day. This is undignified and unsafe,” said BMA consultants committee emergency medicine lead Den Langhor.
“The government’s recent commitments on corridor care are a small step forward, but mean nothing for the thousands of patients this year who have waited days for treatment. Much more urgent and substantial change is needed to resolve the problem properly and quickly. This crucially means urgently increasing beds and staffing in hospitals to manage demand coming in, as well as in community and social care services, to enable effective discharge and keep patients flowing in and out of hospitals properly,” he added.
