Patient ambulance wait time doubles in two years

The number of patients waiting an hour or over to be transferred from an ambulance into an NHS A&E ward has doubled in England over the past two years.

According to figures obtained by Labour through freedom of information requests, there were 111,524 people who waited at least 60 minutes in an ambulance in 2016-17, up from 51,115 in 2014-15, prompting fears about patient safety.

The increase was even more pronounced in other parts of the country, with figures from South East Coast ambulance service (Secamb) showing the number more than quadrupled over the same period, while in London it almost trebled.

Labour said the figures were a sign the NHS has been ‘pushed to the brink’.

South Western ambulance service was the only one of the 10 English ambulance trusts to record a decline in waits of an hour or more - by almost a third - between 2014-15 and 2016-17.

There was also an increase in patients waiting 30 minutes or longer for admission to an emergency ward. Every trust recorded a rise from 2014-15, except West Midlands ambulance service, which did not provide the relevant statistics on half-hour waits.

Earlier this year, NHS Improvement (NHSI) said: “Tolerating ambulance handover delays is tolerating significant risk of harm to patients.”

It said that when ambulances are forced to queue, it increases the risk to patients because of delays in diagnosis of treatment, and means the vehicles are not available to respond to other emergencies.

NHSI wrote in advice to hospitals and ambulance services: “It is crucial that patients are assessed on arrival in the ED [emergency department] and ambulance crews are freed up to attend the next emergency call.”

Jon Ashworth, shadow health secretary, said: “These figures show an ambulance service pushed to the brink by years of Tory underinvestment. It’s clear that NHS services last year were operating at the absolute limit of what they could cope with.

“There is no excuse for the government to allow another crisis on this scale to develop this year. They’ve been well warned and they should take action to sort it out.

“Theresa May has a choice in the budget: give the NHS the money it needs to deliver a decent standard of care, or leave NHS patients stranded in pain in the back of ambulances because the hospitals are just too full to cope.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “In the face of huge increases in demand, our paramedics and call-handlers are working exceptionally hard and answering 4,500 more 999 calls every day compared to five years ago.

“Nevertheless, we expect patient handovers from ambulance to A&E to happen within 30 minutes and where delays occur hospital and ambulance trusts have a responsibility to make improvements.”