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THE SCALE OF THE PRESSURE: July 2026 recorded around 2.5 million A&E attendances – the highest monthly level on record – while only 75.4% of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.
2.5 million A&E attendances. 75.4% within 4 hours. 47,000 patients waiting over 12 hours for emergency admission. 1.58 million 4+ hour waits over 12 months. 829,675 ambulance incidents. 898,503 999 calls. 3,000+ patients a day receiving corridor care.
The numbers, at a glance:
Metric | Figure |
A&E attendances (July 2026) | 2.5m |
Patients seen within 4 hours | 75.4% |
Patients waiting 12+ hrs for admission | 47,000 |
4+ hour waits over 12 months | 1.58m |
Ambulance incidents handled | 829,675 |
999 calls received | 898,503 |
Patients/day receiving corridor care | 3,000+ |
These numbers capture the pressure facing NHS A&E departments. July 2026 recorded around 2.5 million A&E attendances, the highest monthly level on record, while only 75.4% of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. Ambulance services handled 829,675 incidents during the month, while 999 calls reached 898,503.
For patients, this pressure can mean longer waits, repeated questions, delayed test results, difficulty finding beds and fragmented handovers. For frontline teams, it can mean more time spent chasing information, updating systems and managing patient flow rather than treating patients. This is where a connected EPR, patient portal and NHS App integration become increasingly important to A&E efficiency.
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan sets out a clear direction: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. It also places the NHS App at the centre of the future digital front door, with a single patient record intended to give patients secure access to their health information from 2028.
Cellma aligns with this direction by connecting clinical information, patient administration, diagnostics, communication, patient engagement and operational data within one digital ecosystem. Its acute care capabilities are designed around real-world hospital workflows, including patient flow, triage, investigations, admissions, transfers, discharge and escalation.
For an A&E department, that matters because A&E efficiency is not simply about getting patients through the department faster. It is about making sure the right information reaches the right clinician at the right time.
An EPR that simply replaces paper notes is not enough for today’s emergency department.
A&E teams work across multiple systems and services:
When these systems do not communicate, staff can end up switching screens, searching for results, repeating questions or manually entering information.
That creates friction at exactly the point where time matters most.
The NHS itself recognises the need for better digital support for triage, patient flow and discharge coordination, alongside expanded SDEC and co-located Urgent Treatment Centres.
Cellma approaches this as a connected pathway rather than a collection of separate systems.
Cellma brings together the core information required throughout the emergency care pathway.
At the front door, clinicians need a quick picture of who the patient is, why they are here and what needs attention first.
Cellma can bring together:
✓ Registration and demographics
✓ Triage documentation
✓ Vital signs
✓ Clinical notes
✓ Previous history
✓ Allergies
✓ Medication information
✓ Risk scores
✓ Investigations
✓ Clinical alerts
This gives clinicians a structured starting point rather than making them piece together information from different sources.
Cellma also supports clinical decision-support tools and pathways, including NEWS2/SIRS for sepsis, FAST for stroke, HEART for chest pain and NICE head-injury guidance.
The result is a more informed clinical assessment and stronger A&E efficiency without taking clinical judgement out of the hands of clinicians.
A&E pressure does not stop at triage.
A patient may move from:
Arrival → Triage → Assessment → SDEC → Diagnostics → Treatment → Admission → Ward → Discharge
At every stage, teams need to know:
Cellma’s PAS and patient-flow capabilities provide real-time visibility of admissions, transfers, discharges, bed locations, waiting times and four-hour performance.
That means operational teams can see where patients are getting stuck instead of discovering the problem after the waiting-time breach has already happened.
In a busy A&E, waiting for information can become a clinical bottleneck.
A patient may have:
Bloods taken → CT requested → X-ray completed → ECG recorded → Results reviewed → Clinical decision made
Cellma connects clinical records with laboratory and imaging systems, providing access to diagnostic information as part of the patient record.
This reduces the need to chase results across systems and helps clinicians make decisions using the latest available information.
For patients, that can mean fewer unnecessary delays. For staff, it means less time spent hunting for data. For the department, it supports better A&E efficiency.
The NHS is not one system. It is an ecosystem of trusts, GPs, community services, diagnostics, pharmacies, ambulance services and national platforms.
That makes interoperability critical. Cellma supports interoperability through technologies and standards including:
These capabilities support the movement of structured information between primary, secondary and community care.
So when an A&E clinician needs information from another part of the NHS, the objective is not another disconnected data island. It is a connected patient journey.
Digital A&E is not only about clinicians. Patients increasingly expect to manage parts of their healthcare digitally.
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan aims for the NHS App to become the digital front door to the NHS, with patients able to access services, manage appointments and eventually view their single patient record securely through the app.
Cellma supports this patient-facing direction through its Patient Portal and NHS App compatibility.
The Cellma Patient Portal can provide:
✓ 24/7 access to health records
✓ Test-result access
✓ Appointment booking and cancellation
✓ Secure communication
✓ Medical documents
✓ E-prescriptions
✓ Patient updates
For A&E and acute pathways, this can extend the digital journey beyond the hospital visit, supporting patients with information, follow-up and communication after they leave the department.
That is an important part of modern A&E efficiency: not treating the emergency department as an isolated episode, but connecting it with what happens before and after the visit.
The scale of corridor care shows what happens when demand, capacity and patient flow collide.
RCN ANALYSIS: 116,141 12+ hour trolley waits after a decision to admit during July–September 2025, compared with 1,281 in the equivalent period in 2019.
At the same time, the number of patients leaving A&E without treatment increased from around 100,000 in 2019 to more than 320,000 in 2025.
These figures are not simply about waiting times. They point to deeper problems around:
Bed capacity + patient flow + discharge + communication + demand management
Cellma brings these areas into the same operational picture.
Its bed-management capabilities, real-time patient tracking, discharge workflows, clinical communication and BI dashboards can help teams identify bottlenecks and act on them earlier.
One of the biggest lessons from the current UEC pressure is that A&E cannot fix patient flow alone.
A&E performance is closely linked to:
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan recognises this wider picture, calling for expanded SDEC, co-located UTCs, virtual wards and digital tools supporting triage, flow and discharge.
Cellma’s modular architecture allows these pathways to sit within a connected ecosystem rather than operating as isolated workflows.
This is where A&E efficiency becomes a whole-hospital objective rather than an A&E-only KPI.
A&E produces enormous amounts of operational data. But data sitting in a database does not improve care by itself.
Teams need to know:
Cellma’s BI and reporting capabilities can provide dashboards around A&E breaches, patient-flow bottlenecks, resource utilisation and other operational indicators. Its AI capabilities can also support predictive analytics, NLP-based voice-to-text and intelligent alerts.
That moves the conversation from “What happened yesterday?” to “Where is the pressure building, and what can we do about it?”
The NHS is moving towards a model where care is more connected, more digital, more proactive, more patient-centred, and less dependent on isolated systems.
Cellma is built around the same principles. It combines:
A&E Challenge | Cellma Approach |
Fragmented patient information | Unified EPR |
Long waits | Real-time patient-flow visibility |
Diagnostic delays | Lab & imaging integration |
Bed pressure | Bed & ward management |
Poor handovers | Secure clinical communication |
Repeated data entry | Interoperability & structured records |
Discharge delays | Discharge and handover workflows |
Limited operational visibility | BI dashboards & reporting |
Patient communication gaps | Patient Portal |
Digital NHS direction | NHS App compatibility |
Clinical risk | Alerts & decision-support tools |
Cross-system data gaps | HL7, FHIR & NHS integrations |
Cellma’s acute care platform is specifically positioned around real-time patient flow, clinical communication, interoperability, diagnostics, discharge and operational intelligence.
The numbers make one thing clear: NHS A&E departments are dealing with sustained demand and complex operational pressure.
But the answer is not simply more software.
It is better-connected software.
A&E teams need technology that understands the reality on the ground, the triage queue, the four-hour clock, the pending CT, the bed request, the ambulance waiting outside, the patient waiting for discharge and the clinician trying to find the latest information.
That is where A&E efficiency and patient care meet.
Cellma brings clinical records, PAS, patient flow, diagnostics, communication, bed management, reporting, interoperability and patient-facing digital services into one connected ecosystem.
As the NHS moves towards the single patient record, NHS App as a digital front door, SDEC, virtual wards and more integrated care, having a digital foundation that can connect these pathways will become increasingly important.
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Cellma supports A&E efficiency by connecting triage, clinical assessment, diagnostics, patient tracking, bed management, discharge and reporting within one integrated EPR. This gives clinical and operational teams better visibility across the patient journey.
Yes. Cellma supports interoperability through HL7, FHIR, APIs, DICOM, GP Connect, PDS, SCR, CIS2, EPS, NHS e-RS and Shared Care Records, helping A&E teams’ access and exchange relevant patient information across care settings.
Cellma's Patient Portal provides patients with digital access to appointments, records, reports, prescriptions and secure communication. Combined with connected clinical workflows and NHS integrations, this helps create a more joined-up experience before, during and after an A&E visit.
