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Hundreds of thousands of patients requiring urgent medical attention will be directed to alternative care settings rather than A&E departments, as part of efforts to reduce “corridor care” and prevent a repeat of the NHS winter crisis.
This strategy forms a key element of the government’s broader plan to reform urgent and emergency care in England, aiming to shorten long A&E wait times and ease hospital overcrowding.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting expressed hope that the initiative would divert the roughly one in five A&E visitors who do not have a physical emergency to more appropriate services.
“Too many people are ending up in A&E unnecessarily because there are no other options,” Streeting said. “When patients can’t get a GP appointment — which costs the NHS about £40 — they go to A&E instead, where the cost rises to around £400. It’s worse for patients and more expensive for taxpayers.”
The plan, which will cost £450m to implement, includes:
- The creation of 40 extra same-day emergency care units and urgent treatment centres, which will treat and discharge patients the day they arrive without them being admitted to hospital.
- The setting-up of 15 more hospital-based mental health crisis assessment centres, to divert people with psychological or psychiatric problems away from A&E.
- The deployment of 500 more ambulances.
However, the final version of the plan omitted an earlier promise to completely end corridor care.
Sir Jim Mackey, chief executive of NHS England, said: “This ambitious plan outlines how we will collaborate to revitalise urgent and emergency care across the NHS. Our priorities include clearing patients from corridors, keeping more ambulances operational, and ensuring that those ready to be discharged can leave hospital without delay.”
Currently, around 141,000 people seek urgent or emergency care in England each day — nearly twice as many as in 2010–11. During that same period, ambulance callouts have increased by 61%.
The plan also includes having paramedics treat more patients at the scene or in their homes, expanding the role of community response teams, and making greater use of “hospital at home” virtual wards. According to the Department of Health and Social Care, these measures aim to make the upcoming winter "significantly better than recent ones."
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, welcomed the decision to release A&E performance data for every hospital. However, he expressed concern over the absence of a firm commitment to ending unsafe and degrading 12-hour waits in emergency departments.
The Liberal Democrats supported Labour’s focus on reducing corridor care, but the party’s health spokesperson, Helen Morgan, cautioned that delays in addressing social care could prolong the ongoing crisis in A&E departments. “The suffering in our A&Es will continue if progress on social care remains painfully slow,” she said.
Ministers have appointed Louise Casey to lead a review of adult social care, though critics worry that with its findings not expected until 2028, much-needed reforms may come too late.
