Paramedics set up units inside A&E to ease long queues

Paramedics bring in a new patient into the new facility at Queen’s hospital in Romford rather than attending to him in the back of an ambulance. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

Paramedics have begun looking after patients inside an A&E unit, in an initiative by the health service to stop ambulances queueing outside hospitals and ease the strain on overstretched casualty staff.

The scheme has led to patients being handed over much more quickly at a hospital that was one of the worst in England for sick people being stuck, sometimes for many hours, in the back of an ambulance.