The Older You Are, the Longer You Wait

Elderly patients in England are still being left in Accident and Emergency for 12 hours or more, and the scale rises sharply with age.

Quick Take

Royal College of Emergency Medicine data shows more than 1.1 million people aged 60 and over waited over 12 hours in major emergency departments in 2024-25.
The chance of a 12-hour wait climbs with age, from 15 percent for people aged 60 to 69 to 32.5 percent for those aged 90 and above.
Age UK says more than 100,000 people aged 65 and over waited one to three days in A&E after a decision to admit them.
Recent monthly figures show the problem is not a one-off spike, but part of a wider pattern of extreme delays in England’s emergency care system.

Older Patients Bear the Longest Delays

Royal College of Emergency Medicine figures show 1,148,666 people aged 60 and over waited more than 12 hours in England’s major emergency departments in 2024-25. The report says the odds get worse with age. People aged 60 to 69 faced a 15 percent chance of a 12-hour wait, while that rose to 32.5 percent for people aged 90 and above.

That age gap matters because it shows the burden is not spread evenly. Older patients are more likely to arrive with complex needs, and they are also more likely to get trapped in a queue for a ward bed. NHS England’s published waiting-time data tracks these long “decision to admit” delays, which are often called trolley waits or corridor waits.

Days Spent in A&E Corridors

Age UK’s latest analysis goes beyond the 12-hour mark and shows how far the delays can run. It found more than 100,000 instances in 2024-25 where people aged 65 and over waited between one and three days in A&E after doctors had already decided they needed admission. Age UK also said some patients were left in corridors and waiting rooms for up to three days.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said the longest reported wait for a patient over 65 before admission reached five and a half days. That kind of delay is hard to square with the basic promise of emergency care. It also feeds a wider public anger that hospitals are asking frail patients to sit, lie, and wait while the system runs short of space.

A Pattern That Keeps Returning

The latest numbers fit a wider trend that has repeated for years. Nuffield Trust says extreme waits have peaked four times since 2022, with January 2026 reaching 71,517 waits of more than 12 hours after a decision to admit. In January 2026 alone, that meant about 3 percent of all A&E attendances ended in a wait longer than 12 hours before admission.

Recent reporting also shows that the pressure is not limited to older patients, even if they carry much of the worst of it. BBC reporting found one in 10 patients in England’s major A&E departments waited over 12 hours in 2025, showing that the problem hits the whole system. Still, the sharp rise with age makes clear that elderly patients are paying the highest price for every delay in beds, discharge, and patient flow.

What the Figures Say About the System

The raw data do not prove one single cause, but they do point to a broken flow problem. Long waits can build when wards are full, discharge is slow, and social care cannot move people on fast enough. The evidence here strongly supports the scale of the failure, especially for older patients, even if the exact mix of causes can vary from hospital to hospital.

For families, the numbers turn into something much more personal. A&E is supposed to be the front door to urgent treatment, not a holding area for days. When people in their eighties and nineties face the longest delays, the issue becomes more than a hospital statistic. It becomes a test of whether the health service can still protect the most vulnerable patients when they need help most.