11.08.14
Ambulance handover delays affecting thousands – Labour
Hundreds of thousands of ill patients have had to wait in ambulances outside A&E units, sometimes for hours, because hospitals have been left ‘full to bursting’.
Figures obtained by the Labour Party through Freedom of Information requests revealed that 280,000 patients had to wait at least 30 minutes to be transferred into an A&E department during 2013-14. Within this figure, 30,000 had to wait for an hour or more.
This is despite NHS guidelines stating that new arrivals to A&E should enter hospitals within 15 minutes.
However, a Department of Health spokesperson said that while long handovers are ‘completely unacceptable’, the number of ambulance handover delays during the period under review was down by 30%, compared to the previous year.
But Labour's shadow health minister Jamie Reed MP said: “Under David Cameron, hospitals are full to bursting and he’s forcing ambulances to queue at the doors for hours on end.
“Thousands of vulnerable people, many of them elderly and frightened, are being wrongly held in the backs of ambulances because hospitals don't have the space. And yet ministers deny that A&E is in crisis.”
The FoI requests, conducted on all 10 ambulance trusts in England, revealed some patients were forced to wait in queues for hours. For instance, one patient in the West Midlands had to wait for eight hours and 11 minutes. Another in the south-west waited for seven and a half hours.
In the Coalition’s defence, a Department of Health spokesman said: “We're already making good progress in reducing the number of patients waiting for 30 minutes or longer – down by almost a third last winter – though there's always more the NHS can do.
“We are providing extra support, including £28m for ambulances from funds already given to the NHS this year, to keep services sustainable year-round. In the long-term, we want to reduce demand by looking after people better in the community.”
An NHS England spokeswoman stated that one of the aims of its Urgent and Emergency Care Review is to “capitalise on the skills and abilities of paramedics and the wider workforce so that ambulances can become more of a mobile treatment service, rather than just a transport service”.
However, she added that the figures published for the winter of 2013-14 show the number of ambulance handover delays were actually down on the previous year by 30%.
Tell us what you think – have your say below or email [email protected]