Overcrowding in A&E departments and corridor care is linked to hundreds of deaths every week in the UK, according to a new study.
A review of more than 19,000 adult patients found that, for every 10 per cent increase in emergency department occupancy, the chance of dying in the following 28 days rose by 1 per cent.
The work was carried out at 134 A&Es in Wales, Northern Ireland and England last year and presented at the European Emergency Medicine Congress in France.
Dr Ryan McHenry, from the University of Glasgow, and an emergency medicine doctor in the west of Scotland, presented the study, which took place across a two-week period in March 2025 and reflects around 70 per cent of emergency departments in Wales, Northern Ireland and England.
He said: “We found that increased crowding in emergency departments is associated with increased mortality for patients admitted to hospital.
“This is important because we know that emergency departments are now often very crowded, and reducing that crowding has the real potential to save lives.”
Dr McHenry told the Press Association how hundreds of deaths were linked to busy A&E departments every week.
He said around 550 deaths every week across all of England, Wales and Northern Ireland may be caused by overcrowding in emergency departments.
“Although we cover the majority of the emergency departments in the UK, this was still a relatively small study, and the possible range of expected deaths is therefore large; we estimate anywhere between 33 and 1,083 excess deaths are plausible,” he said.
