According to recent analysis by The Economist, the Covid-19 pandemic that began in 2020 has caused irreparable damage to global healthcare systems. Years after the pandemic’s official end, clinics across 18 developed nations are facing a severe crisis: hospital admission has become more difficult, waiting times have surged, and the quality of care has deteriorated.
“Our health service was broken in 2020, even if we are all pretending that it wasn’t,” says Dr. Tom Dolphin, a leader at the British Medical Association.
Hours of Waiting and Overcrowded Hospitals
The crisis is most acute in Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments. Waiting times have increased significantly across both Europe and North America. In the UK, the number of patients facing long waits for emergency care has doubled compared to 2019. Statistics regarding “trolley waits” are particularly alarming—last year, nearly 550,000 patients spent more than 12 hours on a gurney waiting for a bed, a 67-fold increase since 2019. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that such delays caused nearly 5,000 avoidable deaths in British hospitals last summer.
A similar struggle is unfolding in Australia, where nearly half of all patients arriving by ambulance wait more than 30 minutes outside the clinic. Even after entering the emergency department, the delivery of service is profoundly delayed.
In North America, an increasing number of Canadian patients are leaving emergency rooms without ever seeing a doctor. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, USA, two out of every five patients wait more than four hours. According to Dr. Alex Janke, an emergency physician at the University of Michigan, American hospital waiting rooms are more crowded and staff are more overwhelmed today than they were before the pandemic.
Why is Patient Condition Deteriorating Faster?
The hospital crisis is the result of a so-called “doom loop.” Research co-authored by Luigi Siciliani of the University of York confirms that the crisis has affected both public and private sectors equally, regardless of a country’s healthcare model. The problem is driven by four interconnected factors: long waits worsen patient health, sicker patients require more treatment time, prolonged treatment fills hospital beds, which in turn further increases waiting times.
The situation is exacerbated by a significant rise in waiting times for elective surgeries. In 2024, wait times in nine out of eleven OECD member countries exceeded pre-pandemic levels. In Canada, data from the Fraser Institute shows that the median wait time for specialist treatment rose to 29 weeks in 2025—a 33% increase over 2019. In Britain, January data showed that approximately 2.8 million people (nearly 40% of those on waiting lists) had been waiting more than 18 weeks, compared to 570,000 in 2019.
Simultaneously, patient acuity has increased. Due to missed screenings during the pandemic, diseases like cancer are being diagnosed at later stages. There is also a higher proportion of elderly patients with chronic conditions. Dr. Richard Leuchter, an emergency medicine specialist at UCLA, notes that patients are staying in hospitals longer and their care is becoming more expensive. His research indicates that bed occupancy in American clinics has risen from a pre-pandemic average of 64% to 75% (reaching as high as 88% in some states).
The Problem is Not Funding
The crisis is not due to a lack of finances. Since 2019, healthcare spending per capita in Europe has increased by 13%, and U.S. hospitals added nearly 140,000 new jobs last year. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has increased its workforce by 25% since 2019, now employing 1.4 million people—2% of the population. Despite a 20% increase in staff in Australia between 2019 and 2024, the volume of elective surgeries has not increased.
Despite increased investment, hospital productivity is falling. According to a recent report by the consultancy Roland Berger, three-quarters of German hospitals suffered financial losses in 2024, compared to 33% in 2019. Aaron Wesolowski of the American Hospital Association reports that hospital operating expenses rose by 7.5% in 2025—double the rate of inflation.
Experts attribute this crisis to several factors: the exodus of skilled and experienced personnel, burnout among doctors and nurses, and lower overall clinical experience among new hires. In the UK, the proportion of nurses with less than one year of experience has doubled since 2015.
Where is the Solution?
To address these challenges, some clinics are redirecting stable patients to centers that operate without overnight beds. Other countries are testing “community care” models, treating patients outside of hospitals, including in their own homes. However, given an aging population and the rise of chronic illnesses, hospital overcrowding was largely inevitable—the pandemic simply accelerated the process, making populations sicker, sooner.
