This winter, Aandamp;E wait times have gotten so bad that more than half of patients at some hospitals in England have had to wait more than four hours.
Hull University Hospitals, Wye Valley, Shrewsbury, and Telford were the worst for A according to a BBC analysis of data from December and January.
Less than 10% of people waited more than four hours at Northumbria Healthcare, the best trust out of the 107 providing data.
Plans are being put in place, according to NHS England, to help struggling trusts.
As the NHS nears the end of its worst winter since records began nearly 20 years ago, the BBC is analyzing publicly available waiting-time data.
There have been snags in the entire emergency care system, including A.
The effects of those delays, however, have not been felt uniformly across the nation.
Possibility of spending more than four hours in line at A.
The study is based on data from the trusts that provided information on four-hour wait times; 14 services did not, as they are testing out new methods of gauging performance for the government.
At the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust over the winter, Gail Fischer, 68, was one of many patients who endured protracted wait times.
To A she went. For more than ten hours, they waited to be seen.
The "heroic" staff, who were obviously overworked, received a lot of praise from Mr. Fischer.
But he also said: "A. " .
The Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust said it was "sorry" for the lengthy waits patients had to endure but added that it was unable to comment on specific cases.
However, it goes beyond the A wait times.
Ambulance crews have experienced delays transferring patients to A outside of hospitals.
The contrasting fortunes of the best- and worst-performing trusts, Northumbria and Hull, show the problems that are currently being faced and, perhaps, offer potential solutions.
Ambulances have backed up outside both of their A.
Being an integrated trust that manages both hospitals and community services is essential to Northumbria's success.
As a result, it has been able to better plan patient care and quickly discharge patients who don't need to stay in the hospital after their stay is over.
Additionally, the coordinated strategy resulted in the establishment of a special emergency care facility where senior A.
The trust in Hull is organized according to the conventional model; it manages the regional hospitals while other organizations handle community services.
According to the trust's chief medical officer Prof. Makani Purva, it is working hard to coordinate care with its community and local authority partners.
But she claimed that over the course of this winter, there had been an equivalent number of patients occupying eight hospital wards who didn't need to be there but couldn't be released until there was adequate community support.
It affected how quickly patients entering the front door could be seen.
"There has been a lot of pressure on our emergency room. We apologize to patients who had to wait too long to be seen and to those who had to wait to be admitted, she said.
One of the main goals of the government and NHS England is to boost performance by increasing integration between community and hospital services.
This winter, additional funds were made available to assist hospitals in discharging patients, hiring more call handlers, and opening additional beds. A two-year plan to improve A.
Without a doubt, hospitals have seen a high demand for emergency care this winter, according to a spokeswoman for NHS England. ".
She did, however, claim that performance had started to rise, and NHS executives would now like to build on this.
The national director of Healthwatch England, Louise Ansari, concurred that there had been some progress in recent weeks.
To help hospitals return to seeing 95% of patients within four hours, she felt there was "still a long way to go," and she urged the government and NHS England to take additional steps and be more ambitious.
