Urgent and emergency care (UEC) teams in England can now download new GIRFT guidance supporting them to minimise corridor care.
Aimed at clinical and operational colleagues, the one-stop guide pulls together existing guidance in an easily accessible format, outlining practical steps teams can take to reduce and work towards eliminating corridor care in acute NHS trusts.
Central to achieving these ambitions is the adoption of GIRFT’s Clinical Operational Standards for emergency care pathways, which provide a consistent, trust‑wide framework for timely clinical decision‑making, improved patient flow across the urgent and emergency care pathway, and a reduced reliance on corridor care. The GIRFT standards are currently being updated to align with NHS England Model Acute Pathway.
The guidance features key expectations, checklists of actions, examples of good practice and links to related resources across five areas: ambulance handovers, the emergency department (ED), alternatives to admission, inpatient care and culture and leadership.
New clinical case studies will be added as they become available.
The guidance clearly states the standards providers should be meeting as a minimum:
- Ambulance handovers: meeting the existing maximum 45‑minute ambulance handover time, with no breaches.
- ED waits over 24 hours: ensuring no patient remains in the ED after their emergency care is complete, with any breaches over 24 hours triggering a senior executive review of the patient’s journey.
- Corridor care limits and escalation: reviewing and strengthening hospital policy to include clear limits on the use of corridor care, and ensuring any breaches of these limits trigger a formal Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
Professor Tim Briggs, GIRFT programme lead and NHS England’s National Director for Clinical Improvement, Elective Recovery and UEC, said:
“Corridor care has become one of the most significant patient safety challenges within the NHS, and we are committed to reducing and eliminating its use in hospital emergency departments, inpatient wards and other clinical areas such as assessment units and outpatient clinics.
Of course, we recognise the challenges trusts face and acknowledge that the elimination of corridor care may be a longer-term ambition, but this new GIRFT summary guidance offers an easy-to-use resource and the practical steps required to make a significant move in the right direction.”
