Around 49,000 A&E patients had to wait 24 hours or more for a hospital bed in England last year, according to NHS figures.
Data compiled by the Liberal Democrats from freedom of information requests shows the longest wait was 10 days and 13 hours.
The party said there were 48,830 “trolley waits” of 24 hours or longer in 2024. That is 19.8% higher than 2023 (40,735) and 57.9% higher than 2022 (30,921).
A “trolley wait” is the time taken for a patient to be transferred to a ward after a decision has been taken to admit them to hospital.
The Lib Dems said the real numbers were likely to be far higher because only 54 out of 141 NHS trusts had provided full data.
Over the last three years, the percentage of those waiting aged 65 or over remained consistent at around 70%.
The Royal College of Nursing said the figures “only begin to scratch the surface” of a “crisis in corridor care” – and that declining recruitment in nursing was adding to the problem.
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General secretary Professor Nicola Ranger said corridor care is “undignified and unsafe” and “must be eradicated”.
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Crisis ‘will take time’ to fix
The government has made cutting NHS waiting lists one of its key missions.
It insisted progress had been made by deploying RSV, COVID and flu vaccines, ending strikes by healthcare workers and reforming the health service, including scrapping NHS England.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “No patient should have to spend 24 hours in A&E waiting to be admitted to a ward.
“We are determined to end the annual winter crisis in urgent care and to cut waiting lists for emergency care, but it will take time.”
They said “providing more care in the community” would help ensure fewer patients end up in A&E to begin with.
The Lib Dems are campaigning for a new team of “super-heads”, consisting of experienced NHS bosses, to be deployed within struggling NHS Trusts and bring them up to standard.
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Official statistics show the total number of patients waiting over 12 hours for an emergency admission in England decreased from 61,529 in January to 46,766 in March.
Some of the fall can be attributed to a post-seasonal peak from winter illnesses.
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Previous analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine found there were almost 14,000 deaths associated with long A&E stays before admission in 2023.
