Ambulance leaders welcome renewed national focus on eliminating corridor care

The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE) has welcomed a new letter from NHS England urging health leaders to take renewed action to eliminate corridor care across the NHS.

Issued in early March to trust chief executives and chairs, the letter sets out a national focus on tackling the practice of treating patients in hospital corridors, which is a growing concern for both patient safety and staff wellbeing.

Responding on behalf of the UK ambulance sector, AACE Managing Director Anna Parry said the move was a positive step, but warned that the issue cannot be solved in isolation from wider pressures across the urgent and emergency care system.

“Both hospital handover delays and corridor care are unacceptable for patients and clinicians, and with the right leadership ambition, culture and system-wide collaboration, both can and should be eliminated.”

Anna Parry

While the NHS England letter did not explicitly reference so-called “car park care”, where patients remain in ambulances outside hospitals due to handover delays, AACE said it has repeatedly raised the issue with both NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care and strongly supports efforts to eradicate both practices.

Parry emphasised that ambulance handover delays, corridor care and car park care are closely linked symptoms of wider patient-flow challenges within the healthcare system.

“The risks do not disappear when they move from the emergency department to a corridor, or from a corridor to the back of an ambulance,” she said. “They are merely redistributed.”

In February, AACE and the Royal College of Paramedics wrote jointly to NHS England outlining key factors they believe must underpin sustainable improvements.

These include strong and visible executive-level leadership, genuine partnership working between ambulance services, hospitals, community providers and local authorities, and a whole-hospital approach to managing patient flow.

Parry also highlighted the potential to expand the role of paramedics and community-based clinicians in reducing avoidable conveyance to emergency departments and helping ensure patients receive the right care in the right place.

Systems that have successfully reduced delays often do so through senior-led flow meetings, proactive specialty engagement, strong links with Same Day Emergency Care and a sustained focus on safe and timely discharge. AACE said a whole-system approach to patient flow, backed by clear leadership and shared accountability, will be essential if corridor care and ambulance handover delays are to be eliminated.

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