Failings in the NHS 111 helpline have left A&E units so overwhelmed that patients are being dumped in corridors, X-ray rooms and even stationery cupboards, nurses claim.
In some hospitals it is now ‘fairly routine’ for patients to wait at least 12 hours to be seen by a doctor, they say.
Other hospitals have appointed dedicated ‘queue nurses’ to provide basic care for the dozens of patients lying on trolleys in waiting rooms.
Many hospitals have reported a surge in A&E attendances and in some regions they have gone up by 50 per cent
On one occasion at an Oxford hospital, 27 patients were said to have been lying on trollies in a corridor waiting to be treated.
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Senior doctors are also having to carry out what they term ‘safari rounds’ – looking for patients who had been hurriedly moved from A&E to another ward with no record of where they had gone.
Since the NHS 111 system was rolled out last month, many hospitals have reported a surge in A&E attendances and in some regions they have gone up by 50 per cent.
The helpline has replaced NHS Direct and local GP out-of-hours numbers and is meant to make it easier for patients to seek advice and treatment – especially at evenings and weekends.
But it is manned by staff with no medical qualifications who read through a series of basic questions to try to assess the severity of patients’ conditions.
There have been reports of patients being sent to A&E with bad backs or coughs, while some call-centre workers have dispatched ambulances for those reporting period pains.
Additionally, patients dialling the line are frequently put on hold, or made to wait several hours to be called back by a nurse, so end up giving up and going down to casualty departments instead.
Senior nurses at the Royal College of Nursing’s annual conference in Liverpool yesterday warned the system had ‘tipped A&E over the edge’.
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Karen Webb, of the RCN’s eastern branch, said departments were so short of beds that patients were frequently ‘parked’ on trolleys in corridors.
She added: ‘There are accident and emergency departments in Norfolk where it’s fairly routine now for patients to wait 12 hours to be seen by consultants.’
Department of Health figures show the numbers of patients waiting more than four hours in A&E have more than doubled compared to last year.
There were 27,247 such cases in March 2013, up from 13,200 in March 2012.
A DoH spokesman said that A&E departments were seeing an extra one million more patients compared with two years ago, adding: ‘Despite this they are still trying to ensure patients don’t face excessive waits for treatment.’