More than half of A&E attendees at the worst-performing hospitals have had to wait more than four hours for care in the last year, official figures show.

NHS data revealed 54 per cent of sick Brits showing up to Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in the year to March 2023 waited at least this long.

Under decade-old guidelines, 95 per cent of casualty patients should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of being seen.

But overall, only 71 per cent of patients in England were seen within this timeframe, according to latest NHS data for 2022/23, plummeting from 77 per cent in the previous year.

Health leaders warned that difficulties getting GP appointments, strikes by NHS medics and the record 7.68million backlog is piling pressure on emergency units. 

Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust recorded the worst four-hour A&E performance in the country last year.

More than half of patients (54 per cent) had to wait too long to been at the Trust’s A&E facilities — 66,159 patients in total.

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust was the second worst in the country with only 48 per cent of patients being seen within the four-hour target, meaning 181,451 had to wait too long.

This was followed by East Cheshire NHS Trust, where 46 per cent patients weren’t seen within guidelines. 

University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust each recorded that 45 per cent of patients weren’t seen within four hours.

Wye Valley NHS Trust and The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust in Essex reported that around 44 per cent of patients waiting in excess of four hours. 

Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust rounded off the list of 10 worst NHS trusts for four-hour A&E waits, with around 43 per cent of patients forced to wait this long.   

Responding to the figures, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: ‘A&Es have been under enormous pressure for years, with people naturally gravitating towards ‘where the lights are on’ and where they know they will be seen in a relatively short time frame.

‘But it’s not just A&Es that are under pressure and that is the problem. 

‘With general practice and primary care also facing huge demand, we know that patients may turn towards urgent and emergency care should they struggle to get a GP appointment at a time suitable to them.’

He added: ‘The data for last year shows the scale of the effects ever growing demand is having on A&E and on patients, with over 410,000 people waiting over half a day for admission, up from 98,000 the previous year, and this isn’t even from time of arrival, so a patient could’ve been waiting much longer. 

‘But with too few staff, beds, or capacity and availability in alternative services, health leaders can only do so much.

‘This level of demand is unsustainable, so we need to see a greater focus on prevention and resourcing for community care to help relieve some pressure, keep patients healthy and out of hospital, and enable them to get care closer to home.  

Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) president, Dr Adrian Boyle, said the figures showed how ‘dire’ both last winter, and last year in general had been for patients, some of whom had paid the ultimate price for care delays.  

‘Record attendances met with the significant shortfall of staff and beds meant huge numbers of patients faced severe delays for care that we know are associated with increased harm and even deaths,’ he said. 

‘We know that it is the elderly, the sickest and most vulnerable, and those experiencing a mental health crisis that face the longest waits for a bed.’

He added that the RCEM added that despite ministers pledging to improve A&E waits, data for this year showed no significant improvement.

‘Since the Government published their urgent and emergency care delivery plan in January 2023 we have not seen sufficient progress on reducing long stays for patients who need to be admitted to hospital,’ he said.

Dr Boyle said this winter was likely to be another difficult one for A&E services and urged the Government to take further action.  

‘The emergency care system is under severe pressure. Resuscitating it is a necessity,’ he said. 

Louise Ansari, chief executive of Healthwatch England, the patient watchdog, said: ‘People continue to wait many hours for care, often in crowded waiting rooms, with little or no information on when they will be seen.’

She added: ‘Undoubtedly, urgent and emergency services have been under unprecedented pressure for the last few years amid the pandemic, industrial action, record waiting times for hospital treatment and struggles to access GP care.

‘People will go to A&E if there is nowhere else to go, leading to increased treatment and care because they couldn’t get help sooner.’

Professor Julian Redhead, NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Urgent and Emergency Care, said: ‘These latest figures demonstrate the incredible pressure NHS staff are facing, and on top of this record year we know that we have also just experienced the busiest summer ever in A&E, with more than 6.5million attendances between June and August.’

However, he insisted efforts to slash A&E waits are now paying off.

‘Despite this pressure, the measures in our urgent and emergency recovery plan are beginning to deliver real improvements with 73 per cent of patients seen within four hours in August, up from 69 per cent in December,’ Professor Redhead added.

A Department of Health spokesperson insisted that Government efforts to boost A&E performance were working.   

‘No one should be waiting longer than necessary for urgent and emergency care and we are taking immediate action to improve access – with improvements made in both A&E waits and ambulance response times compared to last year,’ they said. 

‘Our Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan aims to deliver one of the fastest and longest sustained improvements in waiting times in the NHS’s history, including creating 5,000 permanent staffed hospital beds – with the NHS on track to deliver this by winter.

‘The NHS has already rolled out over 9,800 virtual ward beds to care for patients in their own homes and ease pressure on hospitals, and is on track to reach 10,000 ahead of winter.’

The new analysis of NHS data comes as latest monthly A&E waiting time figures, released last week, showed 2.1million sick Brits showed up to A&E departments in August.

Of those, only 73 per cent were treated within four hours, compared to around 83 per cent pre-pandemic.

All of the Trusts named as low performers for four-hour waits to be seen in A&E were contacted for comment. 

A spokesperson for Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: ‘Like other hospitals around the country, our emergency department at Hull Royal Infirmary is under intense pressure. 

‘We apologise to patients waiting too long to be seen and those facing delays in admission to our wards because of this pressure.’

The spokesperson said while staff are working hard to address pressures the Trust was trying to combat issues with bed-blockers.

‘Each day, we have up to 200 people who have completed their treatment but have to remain in our beds until a suitable place in the community can be found,’ they said. 

‘That causes longer waiting times in our emergency department while we wait for beds to become available.’

They added the Trust had a number of projects underway to boost A&E performance including a new facility to discharge medically fit patients to free up beds and a new urgent treatment centre to reduce pressure on the emergency department. 

A Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said: ‘Like hospital trusts across the country we are seeing an increasing demand for services, with a growing number of patients with an acute need for treatment, which has led to patients waiting longer than we would like within our Emergency Department.’

The spokesperson added the Trust had recently expanded its A&E staffing and physically expand the emergency department itself in an effort to reduce waits. 

‘We have seen improvements in our four-hour performance in recent months and anticipate seeing further improvements going forward,’ they said. 

A Wye Valley NHS Trust spokesperson told MailOnline that their poor A&E performance figures were partly due to a lack of walk in centres for patients. 

However, they added the Trust understood the ‘frustration of patients waiting for treatment’ and is working hard to reduce waits.

The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust’s chief operating officer Stephanie Lawton said: ‘We continue to experience an extremely high demand for our emergency department services, and across our hospital. 

‘We recognise this has an impact on the time that patients are waiting to be seen and our dedicated teams continue to work hard to assess, treat and admit patients and ensure that those who are well enough can leave hospital and return home as soon as possible. 

‘We have ongoing work with our local health and social care partners to support patients with the right care, in the right place, at the right time.’

North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust chief operating officer Michelle Cady said: ‘We recognise the challenges we face in achieving the four-hour A&E access performance standard mainly for our Peterborough site. 

‘A board approved improvement program is in place and whilst it is still early days, we have seen significant improvements in ambulance handover times, improved journey times through the department and improvement of our time-to-initial-assessment performance.’

‘As a result, the Trust’s overall performance against the 4-hour standard in accident and emergency continue to maintain over 60% this year.’

MailOnline recently revealed that no NHS Trust in England with a major A&E department has hit goal of seeing 95 per cent of patients within four hours between January and July 2023.

Record breaking NHS staff strikes, which have delayed or cancelled almost 1million appointments or procedures, adding to the 7.6billion waiting list for elective treatment, have been partly blamed for the crisis.

Some experts have also pointed to Britain’s GPs as part of the problem, warning A&Es are overwhelmed by people left with nowhere else to turn as they can’t get an appointment with their family doctor.

For their part, GPs themselves report being overwhelmed with some family doctors now responsible for up 2,600 patients each in some areas, up from an average 1,900 in 2016.

Bed-blockers — patients trapped in hospital unable to safely be discharged due to a lack of support in the community — is another factor.

About 11,895 NHS beds were taken up by patients ‘no longer meeting the criteria to reside’ in any given day in August this year, the latest data available. 

NHS staff shortages are also contributing, with the latest data for June suggesting there are just over 125,500 full-time-equivalent vacancies in the health service, meaning roughly one in 10 NHS roles is unfilled. 

The A&E crisis is so bad the NHS effectively abandoned the 95 per cent of patients seen within four hours at the end of 2022.

Instead, trusts have been told to focus on an ‘interim goal’ of getting 76 per cent of patients seen within four hours by March next year.

But for some patients a wait of even four hours to be seen by a medic is a luxury. 

NHS data shows that in some hospitals almost one in five A&E patients had to wait over 12 hours to be seen in August. 

Nationally this figure was almost 9 per cent.  

Immortality may still be a concept in the realm of science fiction or the pipe dreams of billionaires.

But there are lifestyle changes you can do today that may help you turn back the clock. 

Simple tips, like exercise and a healthy lifestyle, could extend our lives by 15 years, scientists say. 

And experts have also revealed exciting developments in the pipeline that could  eradicate the disease causing cells responsible for the aging process. 

Here, MailOnline asks the world’s top anti-aging scientists what you can do to live longer. 

Dr David Clancy 

Dr David Clancy from Lancaster University, who has spent decades researching how to delay the onset of age-related decline, has two tips for an longer life, calorie restriction and exercise. 

It may seem simple, we’ve been told to eat healthy and exercise for years, but the mechanics of how this influences aging are a complex.

Dr Clancy explained that these measures can help clear the body of senescent cells, also called ‘zombie cells’.

These are cells that eventually stop dividing, and then accumulate, releasing compounds in the body that accelerate ageing. 

The younger you are the better your body’s immune system is equipped to get rid of these ‘zombie cells’, but this capacity shrinks as we get older. 

Some scientists think we will be able to slow down aging by taking medication that ‘cleans up’ these senescent cells. 

But for now, Dr Clancy said grey hairs and aching joints could be held back through regular exercise and diet restriction. 

‘When things go into a state of starvation or where they think there is going to be substantial energetic demand, the cell will go into a state where they start to clean up proteins that are not working properly,’ he said. 

‘These proteins can hang around in normal conditions, but when the cell thinks there is going to be energy demands on it, then these things get cleaned up.’

Physical activity benefits the immune system by reducing the burden of senescent cells in skeletal muscle and fat cells, according to a review by researchers at the University of Birmingham in 2019. 

But another recent study by researchers in Taiwan suggests this is only possible with grueling high-intensity exercise. 

When it comes to a calorie restriction Dr Clancy, suggests a method that worked for his aunt who lived until she was in her 90s — a decade longer than the average life expectancy for a woman in the UK. 

He says her secret was not exercise, but ‘Ashkenazi genes, a life of relative ease’ and a ‘liquid diet’ for one day of the week, every week.

‘Now, I don’t think the liquid included sherry or wine, but just tea and coffee or water,’ Dr Clancy said.  

But he added: ‘The trouble with these behavioural changes is that they are very difficult to maintain.’

Dr Andrew Steele 

It is never too late to start when it comes to reaping the anti-aging benefits of exercise, says Berlin based scientist and writer Dr Andrew Steele.

‘No start is too small. Obviously you should build up to to more, but it is best to take the first step than do nothing’, he said. 

The scientist and author of ‘Ageless: The new science of getting older without getting old’, says exercise even has the power to improve the fitness of 90-somethings. 

In his book he refers to a 2014 study published in the journal Age, which sees a group of pensioners in their 90s follow a 12-week resistance training programme.

The results showed the pensioners increased their muscle strength and walking speed, implying some improvement to their health, and logically, their longevity.

Dr Steele said: ‘When you go out for a run you can feel your muscles working, you can feel your heart beating, your lungs going, you can imagine why it benefits your muscles and your cardiovascular system. 

‘What is also known is that exercise reduces your risk of cancer and dementia, so clearly it is having a much broader effect on the body than we can imagine.’

Dr Steele also believes each hallmark of aging causes the next one to be triggered so interrupting this process via exercise, can help us live longer. 

He explained that because our DNA tells our cells how to build and maintain our bodies if it starts to get damaged it can cause ‘typos’. 

This can increase risk of diseases such as cancer as well lead to the build-up of senescent cells, restricting our life expectancy. 

While Dr Steele said a cure is being developed to prevent this chain of processes, it may not be in the form of a miracle pill.  

‘I think one of the difficulties when I use the word cure, is that people visualize what they’ll take, and you’ll just stop aging,’ he said. 

‘That is absolutely not what I’m talking about. 

‘It’s going to be a variety of different things. 

‘We might, for example, use drugs to kill these senescent cells. 

‘But there might be other things that involve gene therapies, or stem cell therapies, which can sound a bit more futuristic.’

For now, he said exercise remains the easiest way to add years to your life.  

Professor Richard Faragher 

A non-believer when it comes to anti-aging supplements is Professor Richard Faragher, an expert in biogerontology at University of Brighton.

The award winning scientist has spent decades researching aging and he is past chair of both the British Society for Research on Ageing and the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology.

He told MailOnline: ‘I am always cautious about supplements because you never know how much of it is placebo. 

‘There is a plethora of stuff out there that has dubious evidence.’  

Although he believes there is no ‘one-size fits all’ approach when it comes to living longer he did say basic changes to lifestyle like watching your weight, exercising regularly, drinking in moderation and not smoking increase life expectancy. 

Professor Faragher said: ‘If you do those the difference in your life expectancy is about 15 years. 

‘But people don’t always like that advice.’ 

He also believes if we can tackle the build up of senescent cells we will be a step closer to managing aging. 

‘These build up in your body as you get older as an accidental by-product of repair and fixing you,’ he said.

‘They have behaviours that are toxic to the body and your immune system should be able to get rid of them but it doesn’t.’

Although exercising can help the immune system and ward off aging, Professor Faragher advised people to focus on the basics first. 

‘Worry about the bells and whistles if you are kind of the right weight, you are not waking up six days out of seven with a hangover, you are not gasping for a cigarette every ten minutes and your diet is healthy,’ he said. 

‘Then you can start to move on to what you can do about exercising to enhance your immune system.’ 

Kevin Costner has said he expects his income to drop ‘dramatically’ now he is no longer on Yellowstone – as his divorce battle with second wife Christine Baumgartner rumbles on.

The actor, 68, is reportedly the highest-paid actor on TV, rumoured to have earned $1.3 million per episode of the award-winning show.

His ex, 49, claimed that in 2022, when he appeared in eight episodes, he earned $24.5 million from Yellowstone and other sources.

But the actor said he is expecting his income to drop ‘dramatically’ now that he has left the programme, in order to make his four-film Western epic, Horizon.

‘I will earn substantially less in 2023 than I did in 2022,’ he predicted. ‘This is because I am no longer under contract for Yellowstone, the principal source of my income last year.

‘The fixed amount, ‘pay or play’ and episodic compensation I received has ceased.

‘Now, any compensation I earn from Yellowstone will derive only from my back-end contractual participation rights.’ [A star’s percentage of the proceeds, once the show is in profit.]

‘The most recent report from the producer for Yellowstone shows I am not now owed any participation money (although I have disputed this). 

‘So far in 2023 I have yet to receive any participation compensation from Yellowstone.’

Following furious speculation about the end of the hit Western series – and reports of a sensational feud between himself and the show’s creator Taylor Sheridan – the actor stated in court documents that he ‘doesn’t anticipate being on location for at least the rest of 2023’, despite the show being slated to start filming on the second half of season five in August. 

Earlier this year, it was confirmed that Yellowstone will end after the second half of the fifth season, with Kevin finishing his run as rancher John Dutton in the hit Paramount series to focus on other projects. 

However, while production on the second half of season five is due to start in a matter of months, according to Deadline, court documents submitted as part of Costner’s divorce proceedings against former spouse Christine suggest he won’t take part in filming.

In court papers seen by DailyMail.com: ‘I do not anticipate that I will be on location for at least the rest of 2023.’

The documents – which contained explosive claims as Costner and his wife of 18 years, Christine, engage in a bitter divorce – revealed that he would be returning to California this month to be with his children.

Doubt has already been cast over whether the show will be able to begin filming again as a result of the writer’s strike, which has thrown many long-running Hollywood productions into a state of uncertainty. 

It may be that Costner expects the strike to stretch on until the end of the year, thereby preventing him from filming any Yellowstone scenes, which were initially shot in Utah before production moved to Montana, however his statement in the court documents seems to make clear that he has no plans to travel away from California for any project until at least 2024. 

DailyMail.com has reached out to Kevin’s representatives for further comment.

Christine filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences on May 1.

The estranged couple share three children: Cayden, 15, Hayes, 14, and Grace, 13.

In the court papers, the actor’s lawyers claim that they have made ‘multiple offers’ to get his wife to move out of the former marital home, a $145 million beachfront compound in Carpinteria, California.

But they say they have failed to reach an agreement with Christine, 49, a model turned handbag designer, leaving Costner effectively homeless. 

On June 8, Christine’s side filed a restraining order against Costner which forbids him from taking the children out of the state and transferring or selling any property. 

On June 9, Costner’s side filed a request for an order to kick Christine out of the house, a filing known as a ‘preliminary injunction prohibiting petitioner from occupancy.’ 

In his declaration filed as part of the injunction Costner himself said: ‘Christine and I have been working on a summer schedule to ensure that the children have smooth transition between our two homes.’

He added: ‘Even when I am working I arrange to see the children frequently. I was in California for our son’s birthday in early May and the children visited me May 21-24 in Utah where I was filming. 

‘This month I will return to California to my Separate Property Residence and plan on staying here at least through the end of this year (except perhaps for any vacations). I am a very hands-on father. I drive our children to school, attend their events and am involved in their daily lives. I agree that, when I am on location filming, the children will spend more time with their mother. However, I do not anticipate that I will be on location for at least the rest of 2023.’

Instead he says he will be editing the Horizon films at his studio in Carpinteria.

The veteran actor was said to have been blindsided by Christine filing for divorce.

Kevin is worth $250 million and under the terms of the prenup, signed in 2004, she was to leave his properties if they split and relocate, using a $1.2 million fund to find a new house. 

He alleges that his former spouse is in breach of that agreement – saying that he now wishes to move back into the huge house which they shared.

The lawyers said: ‘What is happening now is exactly what he and Christine contracted to avoid in the event their marriage failed.

‘Christine has accepted the benefits of the PMA (pre marital agreement) over the years, but now refuses to accept this one burden.’

Both sides seem to be preparing for a ‘War of the Roses’ style legal battle over their huge $145 million house in Carpinteria, California. It is owned solely by Costner and he bought it in 1988, long before their 2004 wedding.

Kevin is complaining that he needs a home as he will be off location from early June.

Extraordinarily, he says that he was made homeless during his last divorce. The house next door, also owned by him, is used he says as a place to edit films.

He says that he funded Christine’s two ‘failed’ businesses both before and during the marriage, and says that she was happy to benefit from the premarital agreement for years, but is now seeking to ditch it.

Additionally he claims that following their separation Christine ‘charged $95,000’ to his credit card ‘without prior notice to me.’

That money was spent on lawyers and on a forensic accountant.

Altering a gene in mice allows them to live up to 20 per cent longer and protects them against cancer, scientists have discovered. 

Researchers today hailed the findings as a ‘big surprise’, saying they’ve yet to find any negative side effects.

And the team, from Taiwan, think the benefits could one day apply to humans, too.

Rodents were genetically-engineered in a lab to have a mutated version of the KLF1 gene.

These mice ended up living longer, were unusually active in middle-age and did not go grey as early, experts claimed.

Pushing their age-defying experiment further, researchers at Academia Sinica then decided to inject a group of unmodified mice with blood from the rodents found to live longer.

Mice given the modified protein ‘typically’ lived for five months longer, an increase of around 20 per cent.

Two-month-old mice are very roughly equivalent to 18-year-old people, according to New Scientist, which first reported the findings.

They also remained healthier for longer, with their physical and mental performance starting to decline later than unmodified mice.

All humans already carry the KLF1 gene, which regulates the production of new red blood cells. 

The findings, published on pre-print website, bioRxiv, also found the mice given the mutated KLF1 via a single bone marrow cell transplant, ‘appeared to have significantly higher anti-cancer capability’ than normal mice. 

They showed ‘reduced tumour growth’ and lower rate of ‘spontaneous cancer incidence’, researchers said, at 12.5 per cent compared to 75 per cent in mice who did not undergo the procedure. 

The cancer resistance of KLF1-mutated mice was not dependent on their age, gender or genetic background, scientists also found. 

Overall, the findings have ‘demonstrated the feasibility’ of a new approach to blood cell production ‘for anti-disease and anti-ageing’, the researchers said.

One of the scientists, Che-Kun James Shen, said: ‘So far, we have not found any negative side effects.’ 

Researchers also later injected modified cells, which show similarities to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) into the mice. 

ALS, a common form of the incurable motor neurone disease, is a rare condition that progressively damages parts of the nervous system. 

This leads to muscle weakness, often with visible wasting.

Mice with the mutated KLF1 genes were found to have significantly slower progress of the condition, researchers said.  

Responding to the researchers findings, Professor Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, a molecular biogerontologist at the University of Birmingham, said: ‘I am convinced of the life-extending properties of this mutation.’ 

Gene editing blood stem cells could also have ‘great potential as a therapy for ageing’, he added.

It comes as previous studies have also found infusions of young blood plasma could reinvigorate ageing organs and tissues, leading researchers to rush to produce and trial therapies based on the plasma. 

But while studies have found benefits for rodents, there is no evidence to date that this approach to youthfulness will help humans dodge the passage of time.