One woman reportedly died of heart attack after waiting 35 hours on trolley in corridor at busy Worcestershire Royal hospital

Extreme pressures facing NHS accident and emergency departments have been thrown into stark relief by the revelation that two patients died after lengthy waits on trolleys in corridors, and a third was found hanged on a ward at the same hospital.

It has been claimed that one woman died of a heart attack after waiting for 35 hours on a trolley at Worcestershire Royal hospital and another man suffered an aneurysm while on a trolley, and could not be saved. It is also alleged that a patient was found hanged on a ward. Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS trust confirmed the hospital was under pressure.

The cases emerged after the publication of an analysis that showed the NHS was on the brink of a winter crisis. A larger than expected increase in patient numbers caused a third of hospital trusts in England to warn they needed urgent action to cope.

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The chief executive of the British Red Cross, Mike Adamson, said the charity had been called in to help the NHS as it responded to a “humanitarian crisis”.

The BBC commissioned the Nuffield Trust health thinktank to look at four weeks of hospital data in the run-up to Christmas and found that 50 of the 152 English trusts were at the highest or second highest levels of pressure.

During the period, seven trusts had to declare the highest level of emergency 15 times, meaning they were unable to give patients comprehensive care.

Official NHS figures published on Friday also showed that for the period from 28 December to 2 January, two trusts declared the highest level of emergency on one day each and 17 trusts declared the second highest level – indicating that they were experiencing major pressures and “urgent action” was needed – on at least one occasion.

A spokesperson for Worcestershire Royal said: “We can confirm that both of our A&E departments experienced an extremely busy Christmas and new year period, and these pressures are continuing. We have robust plans to deal with such demand and partners across the NHS have supported us in ensuring that patient safety and emergency care [are] maintained.

“These pressures have unfortunately led to patients waiting longer than we would aim for. However, all A&E patients continue to be seen and treated in order of clinical priority. Our focus continues to be on providing safe emergency care.”

The hospital declined to comment on individual cases, citing patient confidentiality.

The BBC reported that the three deaths took place between New Year’s Day and Tuesday 3 January. On Wednesday, 30 patients were forced to wait in corridors, and 23 had to do so on Thursday, it said.

John Freeman told the Guardian that his wife Pauline, 66, waited for 54 hours on a hospital trolley in an A&E corridor at Worcestershire Royal this week after suffering a stroke, describing the experience as horrendous.

“My wife woke me up at 4.30am and said she couldn’t feel her left side,” he said. “The ambulance was there in record time and she was on a trolley at the hospital by 5.30am. And there she stayed.”

Freeman, from Worcester, said his wife was close to a doorway and woken up every time it opened. At one point she was moved to the plaster room so she could get some peace. She also struggled to get enough to eat. “I went and got her a sandwich and a flask of tea,” he said.

“The nurses were brilliant. They did all they could, but the place was in meltdown. It was manic. At times the corridors were three trolleys deep. There were at least 20 people on trolleys for much of the time.

“It was very difficult to manoeuvre around them. A porter told me they were putting some patients in a decontamination room – basically a big shower room – to cram in more beds. They ran out of pillows and blankets.”

Freeman said the patients on trolleys were mainly elderly people and that he had written to the hospital and his MP to complain. “They should kick the executives out of their offices and put in more beds,” he said.

Freeman’s wife eventually made it to the stroke ward on Wednesday. “Recovery is going to be a long process,” he said. “What she has gone through will not help.”

The Worcester MP, Robin Walker, has expressed his concern about the situation and is seeking an urgent meeting with the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

Relatives of patients used BBC Hereford and Worcester’s Facebook page to voice worries about the situation, and to praise frontline staff.

One said: “My dad was in the corridor [from] Tuesday evening through to [Wednesday] afternoon … The staff, from cleaner[s], porters, nursing staff, ambulance staff and doctors, were all amazing. They were clearly overworked and in need of more staff and space.”

It is not the first time the hospital’s performance has come under scrutiny during periods of pressure. In April 2015, paramedics, including a medical incident officer usually only deployed in the event of a major disaster, helped treat patients in hospital corridors.

Coincidentally, Worcestershire’s three clinical commissioning groups launched a 12-week consultation on the future of acute care in the county on Friday.

Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of the Nuffield Trust, said the situation could deteriorate further in the next two weeks, when the NHS was usually most stretched. “The real crunch point generally comes in week two or three after the Christmas break … There are early signs that there is a problem,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

NHS England insisted hospitals were coping, but Edwards said “there are reasons to be really quite concerned”.

He pointed out that hospitals were having to cope with a 4% increase in A&E attendance, which is more than expected from population growth. At the same time, problems in social care were making it “really tricky” for hospitals to free up beds, he said.

Adamson said the British Red Cross had been supporting the NHS. “The British Red Cross is on the frontline, responding to the humanitarian crisis in our hospital and ambulance services across the country,” he said.

“We have been called in to support the NHS and help get people home from hospital and free up much needed beds. This means deploying our team of emergency volunteers and even calling on our partner Land Rover to lend vehicles to transport patients and get the system moving.

“No one chooses to stay in hospital unless they have to, but we see first-hand what happens when people are sent home without appropriate and adequate care. We have seen people sent home without clothes, some suffer falls and are not found for days, while others are not washed because there is no carer there to help them. If people do not receive the care they need and deserve, they will simply end up returning to A&E, and the cycle begins again.

“We call on the UK government to allocate immediate funding to stabilise the current system and set out plans towards creating a sustainable funding settlement for the future.”

The charity has deployed people to support matrons at Derriford hospital in Plymouth by helping to arrange transport for discharged patients and ensuring they are settled back into their homes by trained volunteers. On 1 January it was called in to support the East Midlands ambulance service across Nottingham, Leicester, Lincoln, Kettering and Northampton.