Ambulance wait figures show need to tackle shortages

NHS figures show that almost a million people waited at least half an hour for an ambulance after having a medical emergency last year.

Ambulance crews responding to 999 calls in England took more than 30 minutes to reach patients needing urgent care a total of 905,086 times during 2019-20. Of that number, 253,277 had to wait at least an hour, and 35,960 waited for more than two hours.

Ambulances are meant to arrive at Category 2 calls within 18 minutes. According to NHS guidelines, category 1 calls – involving immediate threats to patients’ lives – have to be answered in an average of seven minutes

The figures cover both patients who had a medical emergency, such as a heart attack or stroke, as well as patients who had sustained a serious injury or trauma or major burns, or had developed the potentially lethal blood-borne infection sepsis.

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who obtained the figures using freedom of information laws, said: “It’s deeply shocking that such huge numbers of seriously ill patients have had to wait so long for an ambulance crew to arrive after a 999 call. It shows the incredible pressure our ambulance services were under even before this pandemic struck.

“Patients suffering emergencies like a heart attack, stroke or serious injury need urgent medical attention, not to be left waiting for up to two hours for an ambulance to arrive. These worryingly long delays in an ambulance reaching a seriously ill or injured patient could have a major long-term impact on their health.”