The NHS reality

Placing often elderly patients in rooms adjacent to a casualty department is a common way for London hospitals to deal with overcrowding in A&E, a lack of beds on wards and disguising long trolley waits.

The areas, sometimes called observation wards or admissions wards, are effectively used as holding bays for patients who doctors have decided should be on a ward getting specialist care.

But because no bed can be found, they are kept in accident and emergency and cared for by casualty nurses - and these patients are not recorded in official statistics as having been kept in the casualty department overnight, no matter how long they stay.

Geoff Martin, of pressure group London Health Emergency, said: "Accident and emergency is a place where people are supposed to be assessed. That assessment is supposed to take four hours at the most.

"People who need to be in hospital after that should be on a ward.

"What is happening is that NHS trusts across London are colluding with the Government to cover up a real crisis in the NHS.

"The reason theses patients were not admitted to wards is simply because there are not enough beds and we really need a campaign to expose the way the public is being misled over this issue."

The hospital's statement