At least 6,097 deaths occurred across four home nations in 2020-21 after overcrowding hampered treatment

Thousands of patients a year are dying because of overcrowding in A&E units in Britain, and more fatalities will follow this winter, emergency care doctors claim.

An estimated 4,519 people in England died in 2020-21 as a direct result of people receiving less than ideal care while delayed in A&E waiting to start treatment in the hospital.

“To say this figure is shocking is an understatement. Quite simply, crowding kills,” said Dr Adrian Boyle, a vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM).

There have also been 709 deaths in Wales and 303 in Scotland so far this year for the same reason, according to a report by the college. Another 566 excess deaths caused by overcrowding occurred in Northern Ireland in 2020-21. The 4,519 in England “may be an underestimate”, it adds.

The four figures taken together mean the college has identified at least 6,097 deaths across the four home nations that it believes occurred because overcrowding hampered the person’s treatment.

“There’s a lot of human misery behind these figures. It’s uncomfortable and unbearable that people are being put through this. It’s impossible not to feel upset and angry about this,” Boyle said.

The RCEM’s findings come days after the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE) disclosed that patients in England are dying in the back of ambulances, in hospital and also in their homes because there are too few ambulances to answer 999 calls.

AACE also found that 160,000 people a year were coming to harm, of whom 12,000 experienced “severe harm”, because so many ambulances were tied up outside hospitals because A&E staff were too busy to accept the patients paramedics were looking after into their care.

The RCEM’s report found that: “Crowded emergency departments (EDs) delay and dilute the quality of care and while this may not have an immediate effect on the patient, it increases a patient’s risk of death after they have left the ED.”

Referring to the death toll, the report added: “These numbers compare unfavourably with the number of deaths caused in road traffic collisions: 1,827 across the UK in 2019.”

Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “Overcrowding in emergency departments is not merely inconveniencing patients during their visits to hospital, it’s costing thousands of lives.

“This report again shows why healthcare leaders are sounding the alarm, with the health service now under critical and unsustainable pressure.”

Boyle demanded immediate action by ministers and NHS leaders to reduce deaths by tackling overcrowding.

“The situation is unacceptable, unsustainable and unsafe for patients and staff. Political and health leaders must realise that if performance continues to fall this winter more and more patients will come to avoidable harm in the emergency department.”

The RCEM highlights that the government’s Getting It Right First Time programme, which aims to improve quality of care, has found a patient’s risk of dying rises the longer they spend in an A&E.

A&E doctors have warned that hospitals are becoming dangerously full because of Covid and their inability to discharge patients who are medically fit to leave, which leads to a severe logjam in A&E.

In England in October 7,059 people – the highest number on record – had to spend at least 12 hours on a trolley or chair in a hospital corridor waiting to get a bed after A&E staff decided to admit them.