NI health: More than 800 people waiting in emergency departments

A senior doctor has warned of the risk posed to patients by lengthy waiting times in NI hospital emergency departments (EDs).

Patients forced to wait in EDs for more than five hours are at risk of harm, even death, Dr Russell McLaughlin said.

As of midday on Tuesday, 385 people had been waiting more than 12 hours in EDs across NI to be seen by a doctor.

In all, 866 people were waiting to be treated in EDs as winter pressures and the New Year period kicked in.

Dr McLaughlin, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Northern Ireland, warned the situation was unsafe.

He said there is "reasonably good scientific evidence" to show that those who wait five hours or more in hospital have an increased chance of "coming to harm".

"This is about a situation where safety-compromised patients are coming to harm as a result of this delay and there is likely to be avoidable deaths in our current system," he said.

Health officials have issued pleas for extra staff to come into work during an "extremely busy" holiday period.

Dr Russell McLaughlin said more than 500 patients waited more than 12 hours on Monday in NI emergency departments.

The figures for those waiting in EDs as of midday on Tuesday were:

• Belfast Trust 171

• Western Trust 130

• Northern Trust 186

• Southern Trust 194

• South Eastern Trust 185.

The total figure for those waiting for admission to a hospital bed was 388.

Dr McLaughlin said more than 500 patients waited more than 12 hours on Monday in NI emergency departments.

"The reasons for that primarily are as a result of what we would call 'exit block': there is simply not enough hospital beds and not enough hospital discharges to accommodate the new patients arriving."

Dr McLaughlin said there is "a system dysfunction manifesting itself in our emergency departments".

"This is a system-wide failure and not an emergency department failure," he added.

He said he believed the ED situation could worsen.

"I would not be surprised if a [health] trust or the region does not find itself in a major incident or critical incident in the coming weeks," he told BBC News NI.

Last October, the Northern Ireland Audit Office said urgent funding was required to clear waiting-list backlogs and drive Northern Ireland's long-term healthcare transformation.

It looked at waiting list data from 2014 to 2023.

It found the number of patients waiting for elective care had risen by 452,000 during that nine-year period.

The government's target for emergency care is that no patient should wait longer than 12 hours.

In 2023/24, £61.4m was allocated to waiting lists but in May £34.6m - money that should have gone on waiting lists - was pulled in order to balance the Department of Health's books following what it described as the "severely constrained" 22/23 budget set by the Northern Ireland secretary.

Last year, Chris Heaton-Harris set a budget for Stormont in the absence of local ministers, leaving unelected civil servants faced with making substantial cuts.

These spending pressures could be eased by the government's £3.3bn financial package proposed last month.

But the money is only being offered if Stormont power-sharing is restored.