Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health, visited Queen’s Hospital on Friday 10 April and saw how improvements in A&E have led to a reduction in patients experiencing corridor care by 10,000 hours.

In February 2025, we gave over 24,000 hours of corridor care as winter pressures saw increased demand on our hospitals.

While the demand didn’t lessen this winter, new initiatives, including elderly patients being seen immediately on arrival, saw patients experience less than 14,000 hours of corridor care in February 2026.

In one of our A&E corridors Mr Streeting said:

It was bed central throughout the last year, absolutely packed with beds. It’s dramatic when you see the difference.

Against the backdrop of record demand for A&E services at Queen’s the team here are showing that you can provide the right care in the right place at the right time and end reliance on corridor care. That’s the aim right across the NHS, so we’re going to take the best of the NHS we’re seeing today to the rest of the NHS and do our best to consign corridor care to history.

He praised the ‘brilliant’ work of our teams including two SDECs (same day emergency care), a medical SDEC and a frailty SDEC. These allow specialists to assess, diagnose and treat patients on the same day of arrival who would otherwise have been admitted to hospital.

We’ve introduced a new route to initial assessment which resulted in an average reduction of 37 minutes in the time taken from when a patient is assessed to when they start to receive treatment.  

We’ve also put several measures in place to avoid prolonged A&E waits for our frail, elderly patients. We have a frailty line that GPs, nursing homes and the London Ambulance Service can call. It’s staffed by geriatricians who provide advice on alternatives and in 70% of cases it has resulted in the patient receiving treatment somewhere other than an A&E.  

We launched a pilot which involved elderly patients being seen in A&E by a multidisciplinary team before being moved to the frailty SDEC. On the first day, post consultation, seven patients went home and only one needed to be admitted.  

Fiona Wheeler, our Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer, said:

This was a great opportunity to show Wes Streeting the changes we’ve made to improve patient care in our A&E at Queen’s hospital.

We provided 10,000 fewer hours of corridor care in February, compared with the same month the year before.

Despite these improvements, the department isn’t fit for purpose which is why we’re campaigning for the £42m we need to transform it for patients and staff.

Mr Streeting also spoke to patients about their experience, among them Victor Shafier, 85, who despite a long wait for a blood transfusion due to his specific blood type, praised ‘the wonderful staff’ looking after him.

Kenneth Hall (pictured with Wes below), 91, was being cared for on our frailty SDEC. He said:

I came in by ambulance, and it was straight through. It has been very calm and collected and I’ve even enjoyed the food.

Queen’s Hospital has been blighted by corridor care since 2023, in part due to it being designed in 2006 to care for just over 300 people a day; now we regularly see double that demand. In January 2025, we launched a campaign to secure the funding we need to completely transform the poorly laid out department which will help to eradicate corridor care.