Huge rise in number of people in England’s A&Es for coughs or hiccups | A&E

Millions of people turn to emergency departments in England for minor ailments including coughs, stuffy noses and hiccups, according to data that health officials say highlights the failure to give patients timely access to primary care.

Emergency services are designed only for serious injuries and life-threatening emergencies. But many are overwhelmed with patients whose health problems should be treated elsewhere, including an almost tenfold increase in the number of people seeking help for a cough.

Emergency room visits for hiccups, dizziness and a myriad of other minor ailments have also spiked. The trend of patients heading to emergency departments with non-urgent symptoms is underlined by the fact that doctors found no problems with more than 2 million A&E patients in 2024-25.

It comes as Wes Streeting, the health secretary, faces pressure to show he is making progress after a year and a half at the helm of the NHS. Last month, Professor Kamila Hawthorne, Britain’s most senior GP, told the Guardian that practices wanted to hire more doctors to meet demand for primary care, but could not afford to do so due to a lack of core funding.

As people continue to be asked to stay at home in the new year if they have flu or Covid symptoms, analysis of NHS data by news agency PA Media has found more patients are turning to A&E for minor problems.

Over the past five years, doctors have seen nearly 1.9 million cases of people seeking help for headaches. Nearly 1.4 million emergency department visits in England from 2020-21 to 2024-25 were related to a cough and 1.2 million to a sore throat.

One million emergency room visits were due to earaches, the analysis found. There were nearly 69,000 emergency room visits for stuffy noses, 4,200 for hiccups and 290,000 cases of constipation.

The figures show how emergency medical assistance for certain medical emergencies has remained relatively constant during and since the pandemic. For example, 10,293 visits for cardiac arrest were recorded in 2020-21, compared to 10,744 in 2024-25. The number of people diagnosed in emergency rooms with a hip fracture was 43,646 in 2020-21 and 43,326 in 2024-25.

At the same time, there has been a notable increase in visits for minor ailments. Around 44,000 cases of “cough” were treated in 2020-21 and this number increased each year to reach 435,728 in 2024-25, a ten-fold increase.

There were 59,120 emergency room visits whose primary complaint was diarrhea in 2020-21, increasing each year to reach 143,591 by 2024-25. Constipation cases increased from 40,962 to 70,933, back pain from 211,266 to 396,724, nausea from 9,795 to 20,516 and hiccups from 587 to 1,093.

Doctors recorded “no abnormalities detected” for 2.2 million emergency room visits in 2024-25, while more than half a million patients were discharged before a first diagnosis was made, figures show.

The government’s 10-year plan for the health service committed to moving care away from hospitals, creating a “neighborhood health service” in towns across the country.

But Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said change needed to happen much more quickly.

“Patients choosing to go to emergency departments to get help for relatively simple conditions like earaches highlight the failure to give people sufficient access to convenient, responsive services closer to home, where they can get the help they need right away,” he said.

“Our wish for the new year would be to see neighborhood healthcare ‘turbocharged’ to create many more primary care appointments, in communities and GP practices, to increase patient satisfaction with the NHS and ease pressure on busy emergency departments.

Dr Ian Higginson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “This is a symptom of the health system not working as it was designed to do. Just like our emergency services. [emergency doctors]our colleagues in primary and community services are at capacity when their services are open, but these services are often not open when patients need them.

National Pharmacy Association Chief Executive Henry Gregg said people were spending hours in emergency rooms with problems that could instead be treated at a community pharmacy.

“Pharmacists are highly trained healthcare professionals and can now provide prescription medicines within the NHS without the need for an appointment with a GP, for a range of common illnesses,” he said.

NHS England said staff were working hard to increase the number of routes to health services so patients can get quick and convenient care closer to them. He urged people to use alternatives to A&E to get help in the most appropriate place, including online, telephone or in-person services.

A spokesperson added: “As always, the public should use A&E and 999 for life-threatening conditions and serious injuries – and for non-life-threatening care, call NHS 111 or use 111 online, which can direct you to the most appropriate place – whether that is your local pharmacy, a walk-in center or self-help clinical advice.

The Department of Health and Social Care said there was a “long way to go” to fix the NHS, but insisted it was “already making a change” by moving care from hospitals to communities.

A spokesperson said: “We are putting the rubber on the road and building new neighborhood health services, increasing funding for community pharmacy services and building more community diagnostic centers which offer evening and weekend appointments.