Patients are being admitted to hospital to avoid breaching a government target on waiting times, NHS figures suggest.
More than one in twenty patients attending hospital in an emergency are being admitted to wards just minutes before the maximum four-hour wait.
Health unions have complained that staff are being “pressured” into manipulating data and admitting patients unnecessarily to meet the target, which aims to treat or discharge all accident and emergency patients within four hours.
Figures from the NHS Information Centre show that almost all patients in England are seen within the four-hour deadline, but there is a peak in the number of people admitted to a ward with just ten minutes to spare. Two-thirds of those treated as the deadline approaches are admitted to hospital, compared to just over one in five patients coming from A&E overall.
It is the first time such analysis has been done and the statistics are categorised as “experimental”.
The Royal College of Nursing warned last week that the four-hour target meant some nurses were “pushed into practices” that were risky for patients.
It said that there were “negative consequences” for patient care, especially those needing treatment in A&E wards, but not necessarily requiring an overnight stay.
Read more at The Times.
