Ambulance response times worst in country
Ambulance response times in Lanarkshire are the worst in Scotland.
That’s the findings of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, which shows the region has the highest number of emergency callers who have had to wait over two hours for an ambulance to arrive.
The new findings, released last week by the Scottish Conservatives, come as the UK Armed Forces have been drafted in to help NHS Lanarkshire tackle rising waiting times and treatment backlogs.
Over one in ten callers have waited more than two hours for an ambulance in the area so far this year, the highest rate of any health board in Scotland.
The Conservatives’ Central Scotland list MSP Meghan Gallacher said: “Support from our UK Armed Forces has had to be called in just to keep our ambulance service and A&E departments going.
“This support is hugely welcome and will hopefully ease the pressure on heroic frontline staff.
“However, our exhausted ambulance drivers and paramedics need long-term support and funding.”
The FOI data also reveals that since 2018, the number of Lanarkshire callers who waited over two hours for an ambulance to arrive has risen from 738 to around 5120 – an increase of over 590 per cent.
This is compared to an increase of 558 per cent in Scotland as a whole.
In the last year alone, two-hour wait times have increased by 75 per cent in the region – despite the fact that over 15,000 fewer calls have been recorded in 2021 so far, than in 2020.
Last month, the head of the Scottish Ambulance Service apologised to patients over increased waiting times.
Pauline Howie said staff were working under “unprecedented pressure” in response to a “huge increase” in Covid and non-covid cases.
She said everything was being done to get people to hospital as quickly as possible, including hiring new staff.
“We are really at full capacity at the moment and our hospitals are operating at, or near, capacity too,” she said.
“That in turn means it takes longer for us to hand patients over when we get to the emergency departments.
“The impact of that is that we are not able to get to patients who are waiting on an ambulance response as quickly as we would like to.
“I want to apologise to anyone who has experienced a delay.”
The Scottish Ambulance Service say they have been experiencing “significant and sustained pressures” recently, reflective of wider challenges across the NHS in Scotland.
A spokesman told us: “Patient handover delays at hospitals due to emergency departments being at capacity, continue to be a major issue and are significantly impacting on our ability to get to patients as quickly as we’d like to.
“We are working closely with health boards to mitigate external challenges on our service and recruitment and training of new ambulance staff continues across the country to provide additional capacity going forward.”
And the spokesperson added: “Eleven new hospital ambulance liaison officers who assist with flow at hospitals are in the process of being recruited and more than 100 additional trained staff will begin their first shifts this month.”