England’s Hospitals Under ‘Relentless Pressure’ As E.R. Woes Continue

England’s hospitals continue to endure “relentless” pressure on their accident and emergency services, data from England’s National Health Service shows.

The latest NHS England “situation report” shows that ambulances took more than 77,000 people to emergency departments last week: an increase of roughly 5,000 on the week before.

Bed occupancy remains stubbornly high, with more than 95% of general and acute hospital beds filled. Staff absence has fallen, however, as has the number of patients in hospital with flu.

Despite ongoing pressure, NHS providers also saw a fall in delays handing over patients from ambulances to emergency departments this week: a key marker of patient flow through hospitals.

Lengthy ambulance delays have become commonplace in England as hospitals have struggled to free up space for new patients in hospitals.

This winter has seen particularly poor ambulance handover performance, with overcrowded emergency departments and queues of ambulances lined up outside hospitals. In turn, this has led to slow ambulance response times.

Commenting on the figures, Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive at industry body NHS Providers said in a statement: “The pressure on urgent and emergency care services is relentless. Trust leaders are doing all they can to deliver high-quality, timely patient care, and have made remarkable progress on reducing ambulance handover delays in the last week despite higher A&E arrivals.

“However, much more needs to be done to tackle the growing list of challenges facing the NHS, including sky-high staff vacancies, unfunded pay awards and escalating strike action.”

She cautioned that a major upcoming strike will put even more pressure on the already-squeezed services.

“As trust leaders prepare for the biggest NHS staff walkout in less than two weeks, they are having to grapple with unsafe levels of bed occupancy as 93.8% of general and acute ward beds were taken up each day last week,” she said.

The government, she added, needed to release a fully-funded workforce plan to bring confidence to leaders that they will have the resources to ensure hospitals are staffed sustainably over the coming years.

Dr Layla McCay, director of policy and industry body NHS Confederation, agrees. She said in a statement that “addressing the worsening workforce crisis” was critical to preventing similar crises in the future.

“We must continue to learn from the harsh lessons of this winter and the government should do all it can to put us in a better position for next time,” she said.

The government should engage with unions to bring an end to ongoing industrial action over pay, she added. Continued strikes — which have already seen nurses and ambulance staff restrict their activities on several dates in December and January — are “an impasse that is holding the NHS back.”

With more strike dates planned in the coming weeks, union leaders have criticised the government for an unwillingness to negotiate on staff pay.

Unison general secretary, Christina McAnea, said in a statement on Friday that the U.K.’s chancellor “holds the key to unlock the damaging health pay dispute and rebuild the NHS, but he’s not even trying.”

She added: “Paying proper wages will halt the staff exodus.”