Woman, 93, waited 30 hours for bed in a ward

A 93-year-old woman with hypothermia and leg ulcers waited more than 30 hours in a hospital casualty unit before she was found a ward bed, an independent survey has found.

A 93-year-old woman with hypothermia and leg ulcers waited more than 30 hours in a hospital casualty unit before she was found a ward bed, an independent survey has found.

The "Casualty Watch" study of 200 accident and emergency departments by a watchdog group found patients who had waited up to 54 hours before they were admitted to a ward.

Health chiefs downplayed the findings, taken from simultaneous visits to hospitals by volunteers this week, saying they painted a "misleading" picture of casualty units. But organisers of the survey insisted the figures pointed to dangerously overstretched hospitals forcing A&E units to "warehouse" patients before they received specialist care.

The report was published a day after The Independent uncovered a government report that found routine abuse of elderly people on hospital wards and "major deficits" in standards of geriatric care.

According to Casualty Watch, the longest waiting times were at two Kent general hospitals, in Canterbury and Maidstone.

The Kent and Canterbury Hospital recorded the three longest waiting times, with one patient, a 41-year-old woman with abdominal pains, waiting 54 hours 30 minutes before admission to a ward. Two other patients, a 45-year-old woman with a kidney complaint and a 62-year-old woman with chest pains, had waited 52 hours 30 minutes and 49 hours 30 minutes respectively.

At Maidstone Hospital, where the 93-year-old woman waited 30 hours 10 minutes, a 45-year-old man with abdominal pain waited 30 hours and 20 minutes and an 80-year-old woman with an infection 27 hours 55 minutes.

Donna Covey, director of the Association of Community Health Councils, said: "Some of these figures are shocking. For many people even an hour or two in accident and emergency can seem like an eternity ­ waits of over 24 hours are clearly unacceptable.

"Resources are overstretched in many hospitals and it is the A&E departments that are taking the strain."

Casualty Watch, compiled by community health council workers during visits to casualty units at 4.30pm on Monday, showed the worst 20 waits covered 665 hours at 10 hospitals.

It came after publication on Tuesday of a report by the Standing Nursing and Midwifery Advisory Committee which found that elderly patients were allowed to go hungry and thirsty, woken too early or left immobile and denied basic rights to privacy and independence.

Hospitals at the centre of the survey pointed out that all but one of the patients involved in the 20 longest waits was on a bed rather than a trolley.

Stephen Collinson, chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, said all but one of the five patients at Maidstone Hospital were in fact on an observation ward housed within the A&E unit. He said: "They were being nursed in an established and dedicated observation ward. We feel it was inappropriate that these people should have been included in the return."

The Kent and Canterbury Hospital said its patients were undergoing assessment under the care of a consultant and the waiting time did not indicate a lack of care.