Waiting to get in, waiting to get out: corridor care, delayed discharges and rising pressures on hospitals

Every day in hospitals across England, hundreds of patients wait for care in corridors while thousands wait in beds to go home.

If you were a patient in an emergency department waiting nearly an hour for treatment in an inappropriate and unsafe location, without privacy or dignity (now officially defined by the NHS as corridor care), it would be frustrating to know that there were people in hospital beds who would much rather be at home. New data from NHS England shows that in May 2026 more than 2,000 patients experienced corridor care each day.

Equally, if you were a patient in a hospital bed and medically well enough to leave (also referred to as a delayed discharge patient), it must be frustrating waiting to return to your life with friends and family, while knowing much sicker patients need your bed. On average, over the last four years there have been nearly 13,000 of these people in hospital beds in England every day, which is 10% of all hospital beds.

Thousands of patients are discharged from hospital beds every day. However, internal and external barriers mean that not enough people are being safely discharged to free up the resource needed to meet the incoming demand.

The physical, emotional and mental impact of both issues cannot be overstated. Healthwatch describes the emotional toll on patients waiting in corridors: people often experience a mix of fear, anxiety and embarrassment. Back in 2017, Healthwatch also captured the struggles of patients waiting to be discharged, and unfortunately the stories today are similar. People feel unheard, stigmatised and excluded from decisions about their care. The stories Healthwatch has captured are sobering, and an important reminder that behind the numbers are people struggling to get the care they deserve when they are at their most vulnerable.

These issues also have an impact on staff. The Royal College of Nursing describes how staff feel frustrated and demoralised by corridor care. Delayed discharges can leave staff feeling disillusioned about their role as pressure to discharge patients can sometimes feel dehumanising.

There is also a financial cost to delayed discharges. We previously estimated the cost of delayed discharges in 2022/23, but using updated costs from NHS England, that figure has risen and is now estimated to be £2.7bn for 2025/261. This is a 7.5% increase on the previous year, partly driven by increasing costs of delivering care (eg, staff wages and energy bills) and partly due to increasing numbers of delayed discharge patients. This highlights the scale of funding used to care for patients in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The solutions to corridor care and delayed discharges are similar, despite being at opposite ends of the hospital.

Part of this lies within hospitals. Hospitals can control how patients move through the hospital, how space is used, and how safety risks are balanced. The previous health and social care secretary promised to effectively eliminate corridor care, and NHS England has plans in place to increase emergency care capacity and improve efficiency. Additionally, the Urgent and emergency care plan for 2025/26 set out actions to reduce both corridor care and delayed discharges.

However, if the new health and social care secretary is serious about fixing issues inside hospitals, he’ll need to plan for bigger and bolder action outside hospitals too. Hospitals have less control over incoming demand and over capacity in the wider system to care for people. To reduce pressure on them, the government needs to effectively implement the shift to community care (as set out in the 10 Year Health Plan); finally reform social care; and go further on primary prevention (for example tackling childhood obesity). Not only will that create a more effective and sustainable health and care system, but it will also improve the experiences of staff and patients. Most people would much rather be cared for in their own home, or not need care at all, than be stuck in a hospital bed – or even in a corridor.

Corridor care and delayed discharges are not new issues, but the new data on corridor care and the financial impact of delayed discharges highlights the need for urgent action. The solutions to both issues aren’t new either. We have been talking about them for decades. The government just needs to commit to turning the radical shifts they promised into reality.