King's Mill's Fit2Sit seats some A&E patients in chairs, cutting waits 40 minutes

A June 2025 BBC report from the Local Democracy Reporting Service describes Fit2Sit at King's Mill Hospital in Sutton-in-Ashfield, introduced in January to tackle overcrowding and improve patient flow. Medics identify patients who need assessment but do not need to lie on a trolley while they wait, and a separate room is set aside to hold 19 of them.

Lead nurse Julia Rose said the staff-suggested idea had dramatically reduced overcrowding. Richard Kemp, a divisional director of nursing, said clinicians can stay in consulting rooms and keep patients due an assessment in a private area; if an investigation is ongoing, a patient can go back to the waiting room, whereas previously all of them would have been in the majors space.

The scheme cost about £12,600, from the trust's Daffodil Volunteers fund, including £5,000 awarded from a Dragon's Den initiative in which hospital staff pitch their own ideas to managers.

Not every waiting patient needs a bed: put those who only need assessment in a chair room and keep the trolleys for the sick.

Trolley spaces in majors were being used by patients who did not need to lie down.

A dedicated chair room gives assessed patients a place to wait.

Clinicians can keep working from consulting rooms rather than the crowded majors area.

The staff-suggested idea was cheap to fund through an internal pitch scheme.

Match the furniture to the need: when a scarce resource (trolleys) is used by people who do not need it, give those people a cheaper place.

The board heard waits for non-admitted patients fell by about 40 minutes, from 196 to 150. The average number in majors dropped from 61 to 35, and 89% of ambulance patients were offloaded within 30 minutes, versus 80% in December 2024.