By March 2028, NHS England will expand Martha’s Rule to all hospital A&E departments and waiting rooms, giving patients and families 24/7 access to an independent, rapid clinical review if they feel a patient’s condition is worsening and their concerns are being ignored.
Under the newly expanded initiative, patients, families, and NHS staff in all emergency departments can call a dedicated phone number 24/7 to trigger an urgent, independent review if they feel a patient’s deteriorating condition is being ignored.
By March 2028, NHS England will fully expand Martha’s Rule to all hospital A&Es and waiting rooms, enabling patients, families, and staff to call a dedicated phone line for an urgent clinical review if they feel a patient’s deteriorating condition is being overlooked.
Building on thousands of potentially life-saving calls across adult and children’s wards, successful early testing has proven that Martha’s Rule works effectively in busy A&Es, paving the way for its nationwide expansion to all emergency departments and waiting rooms by March 2028.
Supported by Health and Social Care Minister Baroness Merron as a vital way to ensure patients and families are heard, Martha’s Rule will expand to all hospital A&Es and waiting rooms by March 2028, building on successful ward testing to give families a direct lifeline when raising concerns about deteriorating care.
By expanding Martha’s Rule to all hospital A&Es and waiting rooms by March 2028, the NHS will provide a vital lifeline and another way for patients, families, and staff to speak up so that concerns about a deteriorating patient are acted on quickly.
As part of wider efforts to put patient safety at the heart of the NHS, Martha’s Rule—which has already reached 221 acute adult and paediatric inpatient sites ahead of full ward rollout by 2027—will expand to all hospital A&Es and waiting rooms by March 2028, providing a vital lifeline for families and staff to ensure concerns about a deteriorating patient are acted on quickly.
While many argue that this life-saving safety measure should be introduced immediately rather than delayed, the NHS is using a phased rollout until March 2028 to ensure all hospitals can properly train staff, set up dedicated 24/7 phone lines, and establish independent clinical teams capable of responding to emergency escalations without failing.
While the policy is a good idea in theory, deep scepticism remains over whether overstretched hospitals can realistically deploy dedicated review teams when patients are already struggling just to get a bed in packed waiting rooms.
Ultimately, despite the promising intent of Martha’s Rule, there is widespread doubt that the NHS will ever successfully deliver these dedicated teams given the chronic, everyday struggles of overcrowded emergency departments.
Many believe the lengthy two-year timeline is intentionally designed so that the public will completely forget about the promised safety scheme by the time the 2028 deadline arrives, and sceptics argue that the initiative will ultimately result in unanswered phones ringing out, allowing the government to rely on semantic loopholes to avoid accountability for a failed safety net.
