Patients are dying inevitably as record numbers spend at least 12 hours stuck on a trolley in hospital corridors waiting for a bed to become available, doctors’ leaders say. Waiting times are worse than ever across almost all measures, including cancer and elective surgery, according to NHS England’s monthly performance statistics. Health chiefs expect the “unacceptably bad” situation to worsen over the winter as nurses prepare to walk out before Christmas in their first national strike, potentially disrupting care for hundreds of thousands of patients. In October a record 594,389 patients waited beyond the four-hour target to be seen in A&E, a 30 per cent increase
