The One Bermuda Alliance has called for an independent review of deaths that may have been caused by overcrowding at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

David Rogers, the OBA’s health spokesman, made the call after the former chief of emergency services at the hospital said patients were being put at risk as they often spent days at a time languishing in emergency department hallways instead of being transferred to acute care wards.

Edward Schultz, who ran the hospital’s emergency department for more than 30 years, also said that while he was chief of the new emergency department, he documented six or seven deaths that he felt “were entirely related to boarding and overcrowding”.

Mr Rogers, who was appointed to the Senate last month and has a long background in healthcare, agreed with Dr Schultz that the crisis was predictable and could have been avoided.

He said: “The former chief of emergency said it clearly: during his two years leading the new emergency department, he recorded between six and seven deaths that he believed were directly caused by boarding and overcrowding.

“Think about those deaths not as numbers, but as real people. They were mothers, fathers, grandparents and neighbours who walked into the hospital for help and never walked out again.”

He added: “This suffering is happening because of inaction, and we can no longer say we did not know.

“This 'new normal' is dangerous. When substandard care becomes the norm, it shows that our sense of right and wrong has started to slip.

“Treating preventable harm as normal does not make it less serious; it just means we are more complicit in letting it happen.”

Mr Rogers outlined a series of steps that should be taken to end the crisis, including an independent review into deaths that had been caused by overcrowding.

He said: “We should agree to an independent review of deaths that may have been caused by boarding and overcrowding. Families deserve clear answers when a loved one dies after days in a hallway.

“A fair, open review of these deaths would help us learn so that we do not repeat the same mistakes. That review must lead to strong rules and standards so that ‘never events’ really never happen again.”

Mr Rogers added: “Real emergencies should be rare and hard to predict, but what we have here happens often, and we should have seen it coming.

“We are paying for quality care with our tax dollars, yet people are being treated in hallways and closets. This is not an emergency; it is a pattern.

“There was a bed crisis in December 2024, July 2024, March 2025, April 2025, and again this month. Even one crisis like this would be unacceptable because we knew it could happen. But this is a repeating problem that leaders saw coming and chose not to stop.”

Mr Rogers said: “The hardest truth is that we already know the root causes and we are already aware of the solutions. People are receiving care in the wrong place.”

He said the emergency room was treating medical problems that should be handled in clinics or GP offices.

Similarly, patients who no longer required acute care were staying in hospital beds because there was nowhere for them to go due to the lack of step down rehabilitation units or residential care homes.

“When those beds are full, new patients have to wait in corridors. This is not a mystery; it is a broken system that we have chosen not to fix,” he said.

In addition to the independent review into deaths, Mr Rogers said investment was needed in rehabilitation, long term care, and home care services so people could safely leave the hospital sooner.

“We must protect emergency care so it can do what it is meant to do,” he said. “The emergency department should not become a permanent ward.

“To stop that from happening, we need more staff and better surge capacity so people can be treated in proper rooms, not corridors.

“We also need better access to same day and after hours primary care so people do not have to use the emergency department as their only way into the health system.

“We cannot erase the suffering that has already happened. But we can choose together not to accept a health system where deaths in hallways are the predictable result of doing nothing. We know what the problems are. We know many of the answers.

“The real question now is whether we have the courage to act before the next emergency, the next crisis and the next preventable death in a hallway that all of us pay for.”