Newly-published data on corridor care is a welcome sign that a national scandal is being taken seriously - but data alone will not make a difference to patient care.

This is the key concern from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine today (11 June), following the first-time publication of corridor care data by NHS England.

This data reported that there were, on average, 2,241 patients experiencing corridor care on a given day in English Emergency Departments (EDs) in May 2026. On top of this, there was a daily average of 669 patients in hospital wards experiencing corridor care.

That’s roughly equal to one in 21 ED attendances, significantly less than the results of RCEM’s 2025 survey of Clinical Leads in England – which found that on a given day in August, one in five ED patients experienced corridor care.

Meanwhile, today’s data on ED performance showed that the number of patients waiting 12 or more hours in A&E before being transferred, admitted or discharged is the highest of any May on record – at 147,957.

First time data from NHS England on corridor care follows the publication of a definition of the practice in March of this year. At the time, RCEM aired concern about the potential for this definition to lead to problems with counting, and to miss some incidents of corridor care.

As well as this, today’s data – which NHSE described as experimental – saw 30 trusts reporting either zero days of corridor care, incomplete data for the month, or no data at all.

Responding to today’s stats, Dr Ian Higginson, RCEM President, said: “Corridor care is utterly unacceptable. It’s an undignified and dangerous way to deal with patients.

“Today, for the first time, NHS England has published data attempting to capture the scale of the problem in our hospitals, with the goal of eradicating corridor care.

“Attempts to better understand, and ultimately end, this awful and dangerous practice are welcome. We hope that the publication of this data will mean trusts and policymakers will begin to take stern action on curbing it.

“However, we remain doubtful about the current accuracy and scope of this data – as well as the potential for trusts ‘gaming’ the system.

“Corridor care is a national scandal, and a problem which policymakers have acknowledged has become normalised. Yet, in some areas, the data seems low. Many of our members will likely feel that the data has not captured their day to day reality.

“We remain sceptical whether NHS England’s definition of corridor care, which underpins today’s data, is up to the job of capturing the true scale of the problem. We are concerned it is open to gaming and variable interpretation.

“This could also lead to trusts focusing on getting their corridor care number to ‘0’, rather than on transparency, and on doing the right thing for patients.

“Moreover, while we welcome the government’s commitment to ending corridor care by the end of this parliament – it is still focusing far too much on reducing attendances and diverting people away from EDs.

“Corridor care is a symptom of overcrowding. It is not, for the most part, caused by the least sick patients.

“We are still not seeing the measures we know will curb corridor care being put into place, such as: increasing hospital bed availability, weekend and evening working for other parts of the system and investments in more staffed beds.

“We hope the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will work with us to put into place these interventions. Lives are at stake.”