NHS Confederation responds to Age UK’s data analysis on impact of corridor care

Responding to Age UK’s analysis of NHS England data on the impact of corridor care on older people, Rory Deighton, acute and community care director at the NHS Confederation, said:

“This new analysis paints a deeply shocking picture of people’s experiences waiting for care in busy A&E departments. As well as being undignified, unsafe and frustrating for patients and their families, corridor care can leave NHS staff with the moral injury of being unable to provide the quality of care they would like to.

“It is also true that corridor care has gone from being a last resort during the busiest periods to an increasingly common way of managing the rising demand the NHS is facing. It is a symptom of wider system pressures, including problems with patient flow, rising demand due to an ageing population and fragility in the social care sector.

“This analysis rightly points out that older people can often face longer waits and corridor care because they usually have multiple and more complex health needs which take longer to assess and treatment. Health leaders continue to work on tackling the root causes of corridor care, trying to ensure flow through the system by improving patient discharge, working with local authorities to improve social care support, and prioritising vulnerable older patients at the front door through increased frailty screening. But until the challenges in social care are tackled it is likely that the practice will unfortunately continue.”