Two patients were left waiting for more than 60 hours at an A&E.
They got an initial assessment by a clinician in a corridor but then endured a shocking delay for a bed on a ward.
The pair suffered the wait at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge on Monday last week, the Health Service Journal revealed.
It comes after we revealed the plight of 95-year-old Second World War veteran Stanley Solomons who spent 26 hours on an A&E trolley waiting for a bed in Nottingham.
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Addenbrooke’s, also reported 515 of its patients, or 16% of total admissions, waited more than 12 hours last month. This puts it among the worst performing 30 hospital trusts.
Wait times start from when medics decide to admit a patient and end when they are actually admitted.
Across England, A&E trolley waits of more than 12 hours hit a record 32,776 last month.
And just 71% of A&E patients were seen by a clinician within four hours, the joint worst performance on record. The operational standard is that at least 95% should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. It has not been met since 2015.
NHS England reported average ambulance waits for category two calls – which include suspected heart attacks and strokes – rose to 48 minutes last month.
That is almost triple the target maximum of 18 minutes.
The delays are linked to ambulances being stuck outside packed A&E departments, unable to unload their patients.In Lincolnshire, police officers took an unconscious patient 20 miles to hospital rather than them having to wait three hours for an ambulance.
PC Jimmy Conway said: “While waiting I counted six other officers sitting with patients. Our NHS really needs more funding.”
The Cambridge trust said: “We would like to apologise to those who have been kept waiting.”
In August, the National Police Chief’s Council warned that officers were attending to mental health patients and people having cardiac arrests.
It meant police were delayed at A&Es for hours at a time, the council said.
