NHS corridor care and whole-hospital flow

The question tested

Ambulance and walk-in demand move through assessment, SDEC, majors, admission decisions and staffed beds. Compare the stored baseline with a coordinated whole-hospital flow change.

Reveal how front-door demand, ED streaming, clinical capacity, and inpatient bed turnover combine to create corridor care, then compare targeted and whole-hospital solutions.

Current model assumptions

• NHS England defines ED corridor care as care in an inappropriate setting for more than 45 minutes; ambulance handover is excluded. Source: england.nhs.uk/long-read/corridor-care-definition/ and corridor-care-worked-examples/.
• The fictional trust receives 240 adult attendances daily (84 ambulance, 156 walk-in) with an evening-weighted arrival pattern; replace with local ECDS and ambulance data.
• Eighteen percent of patients needing a bed enter an inappropriate-space pathway. This gives a visible local corridor-care cohort without claiming a national trust rate.
• The SDEC scenarios follow NHS England guidance that clinically appropriate same-day care can avoid admission and reduce reliance on beds; eligibility must be locally validated and protected groups must never be corridor-routed.
• Staff cover is modelled as three 8-hour teams per day (night/day/late) with a heavier late team against the evening arrivals peak; averages match the previous constant staffing. Real rotas differ (12-hour nursing shifts, overlaps, breaks, handover time) and SDEC is simplified to constant extended-hours cover because a static streaming split cannot close overnight.
• Costs include resource time, space, queue delay, and a higher notional corridor harm/exposure cost. Revenue fields are outcome-value proxies so the app can compare net value; they are not Payment by Results tariffs or cashable savings.