Alex Therrien
Live editor

The NHS and health are consistently among the topics you, the audience, tell us are most important to you.

So today, with hospitals facing winter pressures caused by flu and other respiratory viruses, we've been covering your stories of receiving emergency care.

We heard of elderly patients waiting 30 hours for treatment and a hospital corridor lined with patients on trolleys resembling a "warzone".

Doctors and nurses also shared their concerns about emergency care being at breaking point.

One nurse said she found herself "fighting tears" at work because providing even basic care to patients had become a struggle.

A consultant said she felt "ashamed" about the state of emergency care in the country, and she we would worry if an elderly relative of hers needed to dial 999.

The story of the NHS being under pressure - particularly at winter - isn't new. But as our health correspondent Nick Triggle notes, there is deep concern among NHS bosses about rising flu rates further overwhelming hospitals.

Thanks for following our coverage and particularly to those who shared their stories.

There's unlikely to be extra money for the NHS anytime soonpublished at 16:07 Greenwich Mean Time

16:07 GMT

Hannah Miller
Political correspondent

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said earlier this week that some patients' experience of the NHS makes him feel "ashamed".

The government is putting in more money.

The NHS was the biggest beneficiary of October’s Budget, receiving an extra £25.6bn, bringing the total budget for the Department of Health and Social Care to £214bn.

The government’s key "milestone" target on healthcare, on which it has said it wants to be judged, relates to bringing down waiting times for non-urgent operations, not A&E.

While wider proposals to offer more care in the community may eventually feed through to improve the A&E experience, that will take time.

The NHS is consistently one of voters’ top political priorities - and ministers know it.

But economic events mean it now looks as if the chancellor may have even less money to play with than she’d hoped for. There’s not likely to be any extra money for the NHS any time soon - and the government is relying on its plans for reform to deliver a better experience.

Hugh Pym
Health editor

Buried in the latest stats from NHS England is a telling number.

In December, more than 677,000 patients had to wait longer than four hours from arriving in A&E to getting treated, admitted or discharged. That was 11,000 more than December 2023.

These long waits could have been anything from four and a half hours to 12 or more.

Once the decision to admit to the hospital has been made there could well be further delays.

More than 54,000 people waited in A&E longer than 12 hours, on a trolley or a chair, before a hospital bed could be found.

The numbers underline the frustrations for staff and patients and are a reminder to NHS leaders and ministers that, whatever the talk of winter preparations, the reality can still be bleak and unsatisfactory.

Pressure on the NHS at winter is "progressively getting worse" and "severely impacting" the ability to treat the sickest patients, a nurse in Belfast has said.

Claire Wilmont, a lead emergency department nurse, tells BBC Radio 5 Live earlier that rising flu cases were also adding to pressures.

“But the overarching problem with bed capacity within the trusts and the lack of provision of social care - which is not a new or unpredictable issue - is making for an unacceptable environment to treat patients in,” she says.

Over the course of her 20-year career as an emergency department nurse pressures on the NHS in winter have been “progressively getting worse” and “severely impacting the flow of patients through the emergency department and our ability to be able to treat the sickest patients first”, she adds.A Belfast Health Trust spokesperson says: “This is not how the trust wants to treat emergency patients, [but] unfortunately the pressures on the system mean that people are having to wait longer than we would like.”

We've been hearing from a nurse who works in an emergency department in Wales.

She's been working in the NHS for more than 30 years and says this is "the worst" situation she has ever seen the NHS in.

"This is not a winter pressure, it’s a month on month, year on year deterioration in the provision of emergency care," she says.

"There is no exit plan for inpatients, resulting in patients waiting days in emergency department for beds on the wards.

"Staff are physically and mentally exhausted - we are taking this burden home with us with no end in sight.”

Hafsa Khalil
Live reporter

Image source, BBC/Jennifer McKiernan

If you're just joining us, we're continuing to tell your stories and NHS experiences as the service deals with huge winter pressures.

I've just spoken to Shelagh McKiernan, 66, who has been in hospital since Saturday after slipping and fracturing her leg while on holiday in Pembrokeshire, Wales. She's waiting to be transferred home to Burton-on-Trent when a hospital bed becomes available.

"It was snowing, it was dark, it was grassy, muddy, and I just slipped ... my leg just wouldn't move," Shelagh recalls - explaining how she had been returning to the lodge she was staying in when she fell at around 19:40.

She says she was "stuck like that for about two hours" until an ambulance arrived, lying in the cold, wet and dark, and that it was "only for the fact that there were people [around] willing to help that it wasn't such a terrible experience".

Once at the nearest hospital, Shelagh says she waited "a good hour in the back of the ambulance" and that it was between 02:00 and 03:00 by the time she had received an X-ray and been diagnosed - calling the experience "quite distressing".

We've been hearing from a nurse in Banbury, Oxford, who says the closure of small community hospitals is why A&E is becoming more and more like a ward.

Will, who doesn't give his last name, tells our colleagues at Radio 5 Live that A&E staff are working so hard, but the loss of smaller community hospitals means A&E staff are having to pick up more work.

He also says it's getting patients out of hospital that's a problem.

"We're not able to do what we're trained to do as A&E nurses," he says. "We're becoming ward workers. And it's very difficult. It's just really, really hard."

Hugh Pym
Health editor

The noise, huddles of doctors and nurses, anxious looks on faces, trolleys being navigated awkwardly around patients on chairs, and above all the dedication of staff on the A&E frontline in conditions which would seem intolerable for more than a few days but are now almost routine.

These were just some of my impressions of Warwick Hospital on the day managers declared an unprecedented critical incident.

Sitting in an ambulance for three hours before going into A&E and perhaps waiting 24 hours or more in the department would have seemed inconceivable for patients not long ago. But Warwick is far from the only hospital to have seen such delays.

Staff told me they were frustrated they could not offer the standard of care they wished. They know that keeping elderly patients in A&E for so many hours is not good for their health. But they soldier on as best they can.

And patients repeatedly told me they did not blame staff. Their frustration is focussed on leaders further afield.

As we mentioned earlier, the government wants 65% of patients to be seen within 18 weeks by March 2026 - compared to the current level of 59%.

Sarah Arnold, senior policy lead at independent health charity the King’s Fund, says this will only be achieved if ministers "throw everything" at the elective waiting lists.

She says this could leave "very little energy or resources to driving the much-needed fundamental reforms to treat more people in the community and prevent illness in the first place".

"Without those reforms, distressing scenes of overcrowded A&E departments will continue to be an unwelcome feature of the NHS every winter," Arnold warns.

NJ Convery
BBC News

Linda Jones, 74, from Romford spent New Year's Eve waiting more than 14 hours at Queen’s Hospital A&E after being sent there by her GP with a suspected blood clot in her leg.

"Every single corridor was ranked up with people on trolleys," she says. "It was like a warzone. Every bed was full. They told me they were four doctors short on shift due to staff illness."

When she was eventually seen, Linda says the doctor spent just two minutes examining her before sending her home with blood thinners, which didn’t relieve her problem.

At the urging of her granddaughter Linda went back to another hospital a few days later, King George in Goodmayes, East London, where she says the service was totally different despite still having to wait nine hours to see a doctor.

"It’s difficult for the patients and the staff," she says .

• We have approached Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust for comment.

As the annual winter pressure mounts, we're continuing to hear about the state of the NHS - including from its staff.

One nurse, who works for a large emergency department in the East Midlands, has written to our colleagues at Radio 5 Live to say she is "fighting tears" because basic patient care is difficult to achieve. Her trust is even struggling to feed patients that are waiting for multiple hours.

Food in the hospital is "scarce", she says - explaining how "over Christmas the vending machine wasn’t filled up".

The nurse, who doesn't give her name, says it has become a "common occurrence" to find patients sleeping on the floor after they've waited more than 12 hours to be seen. As a result, she and her colleagues are constantly "battling for a space for our patient" - she compares it to feeling "like we’re in some kind of eBay bid".

Verbal and physical attacks on staff have also become normalised, she writes - but she says colleagues are not "crying like we did during the pandemic". Instead, she says, they "are numb to this now" - leaving her concerned that "continued pressure will cause more suicides of NHS staff".

• Need help? If you have been affected by anything said, BBC Action Line has a list of organisations which are ready to provide support and advice.

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

While the emergency care system is experiencing a difficult winter, there was some positive news in terms of the hospital waiting list in England for routine treatments.

The numbers dropped to 7.48 million at the end of November, down from 7.54 million the month before and below the record high of 7.77 million record in September 2023.

It comes after the government unveiled plans to tackle the backlog on Monday, including expanding the use of community clinics and greater use of the private sector.

The aim is to ensure 65% of those on the waiting list have been waiting under 18 weeks by March 2026. It is currently under 60%.

The worry for this part of the health service is that the winter pressures being experienced now may unravel some of the progress that has been made as hospitals prioritise staff and resources towards emergency services.

Owain Clarke
BBC Wales Correspondent

Emergency NHS services in Wales are also under a huge amount of pressure.

Shortly before the New Year, the Welsh Ambulance Service declared what it described as a "very rare" critical incident.

At the time,340 emergency calls were waiting for a response with 90 ambulance vehicles - more than half of the fleet - stuck outside log-jammed A&Es.

Flu cases also continue to rise with levels much higher than last year, which according to the Welsh Health Secretary, Jeremy Miles, is adding to the strain.

Beyond emergency care, waiting lists for planned treatments continue to grow withmore than 800,000 treatments needing to be completed and almost 25,000 instances where somebody has had to wait more than two years.

The Welsh government has set a target of reducing that number by a two-thirds by spring, but waits of that length have been virtually eliminated in England.

Lisa Summers
BBC Scotland health correspondent

Like other parts of the UK, Scotland is struggling to deal with the backlog of patients waiting for things like hip replacements or cataract operations.

Back in 2022 the Scottish government promised to end the longest waits for patients but the most recent data up to the end of September shows there were 10,869 waits of over two years.

Of those, 1,349 had been ongoing for over three years.

Part of the plans to bring down waiting lists were to build 10 national treatment centres focusing on elective care, but only four have opened and the future of others is uncertain after the government put a halt to all new building projects because of financial pressures.

First Minister John Swinney says if the budget is approved by the Scottish parliament next month there will be record investment in the NHS - but there is little detail on just how that is going to be achieved.

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Nearly 5,500 patients are in hospital with flu, figures show, with NHS England bosses saying the numbers are rising at a concerning rate.

But how bad is this year’s flu season? The figures being seen this year are not unprecedented – just two years ago flu caused similar problems. But the numbers are much worse than last year.

The truth is flu varies from year to year.

This winter, vaccination rates at the start of December were a little lower than in previous years, which is said to be a factor.

But the biggest factor is undoubtedly that the strain of flu circulating this year is causing pretty severe illness.

The dominant strain varies from year to year. This winter H1N1 seems to be causing the most illness – a strain has been associated with bad outbreaks in the past.

But another factor is that the NHS has so little wriggle room to cope with outbreaks. While there are around 100,000 beds, occupancy levels were well above what is considered safe going into winter.

So a bad outbreak is enough to tip many hospitals into crisis mode – hence around 20 NHS trusts have declared a critical incident this week.

Here are two charts that put into perspective NHS performance in England in two key areas - waits for hospital treatment and the percentage of people seen at A&E within four hours - over the years.

Why has it been so hard to get NHS waiting lists down?published at 11:59 Greenwich Mean Time

11:59 GMT

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Alongside dealing with the pressures in emergency care, the NHS has been told it must prioritise tackling the backlog in routine treatment.

Currently the hospital waiting lists in England stand at 7.5 million, with less than 60% of people waiting under the target time of 18 weeks.

On Monday the government announced it was setting a new interim target to get that figure to 65% by March 2026, before hitting 92% (the level required for the target to be officially hit) by the end of the Parliament.

In recent years the NHS has struggled to get the waiting list down. A big factor has been the NHS’s inability to increase the number of treatments it carries out. Until recently, it had hardly seen activity levels increase since before the pandemic despite the budget going up and staffing numbers rising.

That began to change over the summer, but with the emergency system now under significant strain and so many hospitals declaring critical incidents, it is likely the amount of routine work able to be done will be taking a hit.

Dr Katherine Henderson, an emergency consultant based in London, says she feels ashamed about how “incredibly fragile” the UK’s emergency care system is.

Earlier, she told Radio 4’s Today Programme the UK cannot feel that its population can safely call 999, expect an ambulance to come, and be seen by doctors straight away.

Henderson said it's been particularly difficult in the past few years, with flu cases in particular “tipping people over”.

She also said it felt “incredibly scary” to be working in healthcare right now, and that she would worry if an elderly relative of hers needed to dial 999.

“We need to agree this is unacceptable and get on with doing something about it rather than just feeling ashamed,” she added.

Peter Coulter
BBC News NI

Today's figures on NHS performance relate to England. But the health service is under strain across the UK.

A&E waiting times have been dominating headlines in Northern Ireland with reports of long waits across emergency departments since the Christmas period.

An increase in patients presenting with flu and a lack of social care places for those medically fit for discharge has added considerable pressure to the system.

Over the weekend hundreds of people waited more than 12 hours for a bed while many more were treated on trolleys and in corridors, and in one case an old tea room.

Lead nurse at Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital, Claire Wilmont said staff were “treating the most vulnerable elderly sick patients in an intolerable environment”.

Image source, Mary Donaghy

Mary Donaghy spent seven hours in an ambulance outside A&E after being involved in a head-on collision after her car hit black ice in Belfast on Monday morning, as there were no beds available.

While the figures released today don’t include Northern Ireland, Health Minister Mike Nesbitt introduced an ambitious target, external that from April 2024 95% of patients attending emergency care departments would either be treated and discharged home or admitted within four hours.

From later this year the minister has set a target that at least 80% of patients will have commenced treatment, following triage, within two hours. To meet these targets the Department of Health has said there needs to be sustained investment and reform.

A moment ago, we published the story of a woman whose elderly mother spent more than 30 hours in a corridor on a hospital trolley.

Liz Shearer described the conditions at Macclesfield District General Hospital as being like a "Victorian workhouse".

We've now heard back from East Cheshire NHS Trust, which manages the hospital, and it says it is experiencing a "very challenging" winter period with high levels of demand for care.

“We want to apologise for the impact that this may be having on patients and their families, and to provide assurance that patient safety continues to be our first priority," the trust says in a statement.

It urged people to "play their part" in reducing demand by getting winter vaccines, looking out for others and only using A&E "for major life-threatening illness and injuries".