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P.ublished 12th February 2026
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RCEM Urges Governments To Prioritise Long Term Solutions Over ‘Quick Wins’
New Emergency Medicine Journal Study Adds To The Growing Evidence On The Consequences Of Long Waits In Emergency Departments
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay
That’s the key message from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine following a new study on delay-related harm in EDs which was published in the Emergency Medicine Journal (EMJ) today, 12 February.
The research investigated the harm caused by long waits in ED. The focus was on patients waiting for a medical bed.
It concludes that there will be one additional death for every 69 patients who experience more than a four-hour wait in ED after the decision to admit has been made. This is consistent with previous studies. It’s appalling in and of itself.
Crucially, the study also demonstrated that for every four hours a person waited for a bed, their length of stay, once they got into that bed, increased by 8.6 hours. It’s a spiral of doom. Finally, the study also demonstrates the direct link between overcrowding in EDs, and hold-ups for ambulances.
This intricate study adds to the growing library of evidence and reinforces what RCEM has been saying for years, whilst the solutions have been languishing in the 'too hard' basket.
The problem in our Emergency Departments is primarily caused by an inability to find beds for our patients. One reason we are short of beds is that we are actively making things worse for ourselves by keeping patients for hours or days in EDs.
This is killing people, causing problems for our ambulance services, and means patients stay longer in hospital once they get in, which then makes the problem worse. The financial cost is likely to be in the billions of pounds, which could be spent on fixing the problem rather than being wasted as it is now.
It’s so frustrating that the focus has been on perceived quick wins, without equal focus on the heart of the problem. It is incomprehensible how we can allow this to happen, given the warnings from so many respected bodies, the lived experience of staff and patients, and the growing body of scientific evidence.
Surely it’s time for our policy makers across the four nations of the UK to be brave and acknowledge that doing the same thing year after year will just yield the same results.
It’s time to bring together the right expertise from across the health system and come up with long-term strategic plans that will outlast individual governments, and start to get us out of this mess.
The study can be read in full here.