18.10.16
‘Shocking’ rise in ambulance patients facing long A&E delays
The number of patients waiting for over an hour to see A&E staff after being taken to hospital in an ambulance has trebled in the past two years, new figures obtained by Labour show.
There were 76,000 waits of more than an hour in 2015-16, compared to 28,000 in 2013-14. In the same period, waits of more than 30 minutes increased from 258,000 to 413,000.
The latest NHS performance figures show that 90.3% of A&E patients were seen within four hours, and 67.6% of Red 1 ambulance calls and 60.3% of Red 2 calls were answered within eight minutes. The NHS has not met its performance targets for these measures for over a year.
Jonathan Ashworth MP, the shadow health secretary, said: “These shocking figures show the scale of the crisis currently facing our A&E services across the country.
“Every day, patients are being forced to wait in the back of ambulances outside A&E departments – sometimes for longer than an hour. For patients already in distress this absolutely will not do.
“Time after time the Tories have presided over missed targets on A&E waiting times and ambulance response times, putting patients at risk.”
Christina McAnea, head of health at Unison, said: “There's a national crisis in the ambulance service because of an extreme lack of funding across every part of the NHS.”
An NHS England spokesperson added that the figures demonstrate the increasing rise in demand for ambulance services over recent years.
“Although there are occasions when it is appropriate and best for the patient that their handover is delayed while they are, of course, still receiving care from skilled ambulance staff, this has to be reduced wherever possible,” they said. “Staff work hard to keep these occurrences to a minimum. We have seen improvement in response times in the past month and continue to perform at a high level on emergency response times to the most critical calls.”
A Department of Health spokesperson stated that they expect patient handovers from ambulance to A&E to happen within 30 minutes, adding: “If delays occur hospital and ambulance trusts must work closely together, with support from NHS England, to improve.”
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