New official figures show that in England, almost 3,000 patients per day receive “corridor care” in hospitals, meaning treatment takes place in clinically inappropriate make-shift areas because there are not enough available beds in A&E. The BBC reports the scale of the issue, based on recently published data, with patients treated in ways described as unsafe and undignified.
The Guardian adds detail from the same dataset, stating that the figures record 2,241 daily cases of A&E corridor care. It also reports an additional 699 patients treated in other inappropriate settings. The Manchester Evening News similarly highlights the scale, describing the figures as revealing the extent of the problem and pointing readers to check figures by area.
Across the coverage, the figures are presented as the first time this information has been published in a way that allows comparison across the NHS, with the underlying reason described as bed and capacity pressures in and around emergency departments.
