Almost 15% of England's A&E patients waited more than four hours to be seen last month - the joint-worst figure on record - as senior doctors warn of patients dying in corridors.

That performance, which equals January 2017, is 1% worse than a year ago and well under the target of 95% of A&E patients being seen within four hours.

Sky News Health Correspondent Paul Kelso said: "The NHS treated more patients than the previous year, so demand is rising.

"Staff are working very hard to keep up but they're still falling backwards on that key four-hour target.

"This is despite the Government repeatedly saying that the NHS is better prepared than it has ever been and has all the resources it needs."


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Some 95% of NHS hospital beds in acute wards in England were full last week, the highest since 2010.

Eleven trusts said they had no beds available on Sunday and at various points last week.

Dr Clifford Mann, A&E national clinical adviser, said: "We need better bed occupancy levels during the winter.

"Occupancy levels have been running in the high nineties and that's the midnight figure, so in the day often the occupancy level is over 100% and clearly it's not possible to put two patients into one bed."

Dr Mann said the reason why some operations had been cancelled was to free up beds so "people are not waiting in corridors".

In the week ending 7 January, the rate of hospital admissions increased 50% compared with the week before, from 4.89 per 100,000 to 7.38 per 100,000.

There was also a sharp rise in the number of flu cases presenting to GPs - up 78 % - from 21 per 100,000 to 37.3 per 100,000.

During the same week, 16,690 patients were also kept waiting in an ambulance for more than 30 minutes before they could be handed over to A&E, a slight improvement.

But some 5,082 were delayed for more than an hour, an increase from 4,734 the previous week.

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To make life more difficult for the health service, there was a spike in the number of bed closures due to norovirus or diarrhoea and vomiting.

Some 944 beds were closed, compared with 731 the previous week.

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In a letter to the Prime Minister, reported by the HSJ, senior doctors shared their experiences of working in A&E over the past few weeks.

They wrote: "Thousands of patients are waiting in ambulances for hours as hospitals lack adequate space.

"Some of our own personal experiences range from over 120 patients a day managed in corridors, some dying prematurely.

"An average of 10-12 hours from decision to admit a patient until they are transferred to a bed."

Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS services, called for an increase in the NHS budget to £153bn by 2022/23 to deal with the projected increase in demand for services.

Mr Hopson said: "If we continue to run the NHS at close to 100% capacity, day in day out, permanently in the red zone, it's not surprising that the service can't cope when we get a high - but entirely predictable - spike in demand."

Former NHS Trust chairman Roy Lilley told Sky News the figures were "a disaster".

Pointing to the bed occupancy statistics, he said: "As hard as the NHS works to get people out of ambulances, into A&E and into a ward, it can't get them home."

Commenting on the figures, an NHS England spokesman said: "Despite the clear pressure on the NHS in December, with rising levels of flu and record numbers of 111 calls and hospital admission, we managed to hold A&E performance at the same level as last January.

"We also saw the best seasonal performance on NHS Delayed Transfers of Care in four years and went into winter with cancer and routine surgery waits both showing improvements."