Twenty-four hours of hell in one of New York’s top hospitals have been laid bare with pictures showing patients lying in hallways, urine soaking the floor and staff incapable of providing answers.

A woman who asked not to be named told DailyMail.com that she rushed her mother to the Mount Sinai Hospital on Madison Avenue on March 8 because she suspected the 67-year-old was having a stroke.

This was ruled out by a CAT scan carried out within 10 minutes. But then a nightmarish day for the cancer sufferer and her daughter began as they were left waiting in the ER ward in limbo, desperate to find out what was wrong.