As ministers insist Britain must “live with Covid” and move on from the pandemic, the pressure on the front line of health services is greater than on the last wave of the coronavirus. Evidence seen by The Independent shows that the number of patients who are stuck in hospital beds even though they are ready to go home is higher than ever, due to the lack of care available in the community, accumulating pressure on other parts of the system. A crisis in ambulance services has led to waits of up to two and a half days, with doctors describing patients who are crammed into wards without the resources to care for them properly. Ambulance leaders have warned that by summer, services may be so extensive that they may not be able to respond to even the most serious emergencies. Across the country, NHS staff who have exceeded the above for two years continue to face unbearable pressure, leaving it invisible. Calls by NHS leaders to reinstate the masks were rejected by ministers. Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said that while Covid patients themselves are not flooding the NHS, they still account for at least 3,650 beds in the past nine months – a need that has not existed before. He said: “The pressures on the system right now, I think, are nothing like what we have ever seen before, and that’s doing its trick. “Not only are people sick of Covid right now, but now we are starting to see people having burnout and mental health problems. I think everyone is worried that the system is starting to break down. “It’s been relentless for over two years now, and the system was under a lot of pressure before Covid, and it just looks like something bad is going to happen.” As health leaders warned that patient care was already in jeopardy, The Independent found:

The analysis shows that dozens of patients die every day due to delays in care Stroke victims wait six times the recommended time for a paramedic More and more patients are being forced to take their own path to A&E Lack of beds and staff causes a crisis from intensive care to mental health Hundreds of thousands of patients could be left in a vacuum awaiting the results of scans Nurses are increasingly abandoning health services

Labor condemned the “shocking” findings. Andrew Gwynne, the shadow health minister, said: “The Conservative government needs to explain why standards for patients are being reduced instead of waiting times.”

“It is full to the brim”

Hospital managers across the country have warned that it is becoming increasingly difficult to move patients from hospitals and their homes, with nearly 20,000 patients trapped in wards for more than three weeks until the end of April, according to internal figures. NHS. The domino effect of full beds means more waiting in the A&E, as emergency departments can not accept patients, leaving ambulances waiting for hours with patients out of wards. These “delivery delays” in turn keep ambulances off-road, meaning they can not reach patients calling 999. An emergency counselor in Leeds told The Independent: “It’s full, it’s full to the brim and everyone is very tired. Imagine the elderly in beds, wrapped like sardines without enough space to fit between the beds, because we do not have the physical space. Delivery delays in turn keep ambulances off-road, meaning they can not reach patients calling 999 (PA)

“These many 12 hours of waiting is a disaster”

In the past five months, more patients have had to wait 12 hours for R&D care than in the past decade, according to NHS public data. However, leaked data show that the actual 12-hour wait number is even higher than that, as the number has often been over 3,000 a day since the beginning of the year, reaching 3,500 on Wednesday 27 April – equivalent to one in 20 people who attended an emergency. departments across the country. An analysis based on academic estimates of the impact of longer waiting times suggests that on Wednesday alone, this could lead to an additional 48 deaths. Dr Steve Black, a data scientist who conducted the analysis earlier this year, said: “The NHS once had less than 2 per cent of A&E patients waiting more than four hours. “We know from our work that mortality increases by waiting longer than five hours, so these long waits of 12 hours are a disaster.”

40,000

vacancies for nurses in the NHS Molly Newton took her father Mauris Dodson, 85, to A&E on April 15 after falling. They arrived at York Teaching Hospital where he underwent an x-ray and was told to wait in a small room full of 30 people until a bed was found. “People were lying on the floor, people were bleeding, they had drips on their hands,” Ms Newton said. “They were treated, but they had nowhere to go: weak, old, vulnerable people alone. “I could not understand how this had gone so wrong.” Hours later, doctors told them to go home and return the next day instead of facing an eight-hour wait. After Mr. Dodson was sent home, doctors found that he had lost a fracture to his pelvis – a severely painful injury that had almost made him vomit in pain. Ms Dodson said: “The front line staff is doing an incredibly demanding job in the most difficult times. They are not to blame for this at all. This is the result of systemic and chronic underfunding. “

“There are patients out there who are dying”

Clinicians say the biggest threat to safety is the ambulance crisis, with patients having to be evacuated by 999 call operators. “I’m afraid there are patients out there who are dying as a result of the failure of services. “It’s something the government has a duty to address,” said Dr. Tom Johnson, a consultant cardiologist in the Southwest. In the south-west of England, ambulances are already on a “black alert” – the most serious level – with stroke patients waiting two hours for paramedics to arrive. The recommended response time is 18 minutes for a suspected stroke. According to NHS internal data, while A&E attendance remained stable, the number of patients arriving by ambulance each day in April was 11,500 – 1,000 per day less than in February. Sources said the change suggests more and more people were being forced to arrive at the hospital. Patients awaiting scan results may not receive them due to increased emergencies and fewer staff, says a radiologist (PA) Meanwhile, in early April, more than 1,600 ambulances a day had to wait more than 60 minutes outside A&E departments to deliver patients. In the Midlands, an ambulance manager said: “April is usually the month with the fewest hours lost due to delivery delays. This year is the highest of all time, so I’m worried that if the trend continues – we are currently losing 11 percent of ambulance hours due to deliveries – it could escalate to 30 percent by August. “It simply came to our notice then. I predict this is where we’re going to say to people, ‘Sorry, I do not care what you need.’

“Unmanageable workload”

The intensive care units, which were hit hardest by Covid’s initial waves, have seen an outflow of staff whose positions failed to fill. Dr Steven Webb, president of the Intensive Care Society, said the departments were “therefore” struggling to meet national standards that require, for example, one doctor for every eight to 12 patients during the day. He said: “We are definitely seeing a shift from the acute specialties to the less acute specialties and we are seeing this up and down in the country – this is being recorded in all our units.” The crisis goes far beyond emergency care, reaching every area of ​​the NHS. Dr Julian Elford, a radiology consultant in Winchester, said patients could not receive the results of the scans because of the increase in emergencies and fewer staff. “Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of patient scans are waiting,” he said. This week, NHS data revealed that hundreds of doctors had quit their jobs between March 2021 and March 2022, just as the number of appointments was high, and a survey by the Royal College of General Practitioners found that more half of the surgeries had reported staff loss due to “unmanageable workload”. I’m confused because the government does not want to know the facts The pandemic report in patients also has an impact. In January, record levels of mental health referrals for children were recorded, and the CEO of an NHS Mental Health Trust warned that most hospitals were over 100 percent full, indicating that they had to find impromptu ways to accommodate patients. A note leaked by The Independent showed that on Thursday, April 28, there was only one single bed available for the mentally ill in Cornwall. An ophthalmologist in the West Midlands said they and their colleagues had seen patients whose condition had worsened because they could not seek care. “I recently had patients who came in blind. “A patient had not entered because he was afraid,” he said. “I saw a man who had a precancerous lesion, which is now a tumor.” The number of nurses leaving the NHS has returned to high before the pandemic, while 40,000 vacancies remain (Getty) An NHS spokesman said: “There is no doubt that the last few months have been some of the most difficult for NHS staff ever, with a record 999 calls in the last year and over a tenth of all hospital beds being overcrowded. appropriate to be dismissed in services such as social care providers. ” However, they added that further progress has been made in dealing with …