Ambulance waits at A&E departments revealed

Almost 3,000 delays over an hour in county

AMBULANCES waited more than an hour to hand over patients to Leicestershire A&Es nearly 3,000 times last year.

Exclusive figures obtained using the Freedom of Information Act show waits of more than 60 minutes have tripled in the past five years.

Doctors groups described the growing number of long waits across the UK as “very distressing”, amid fears that this winter is set to be as challenging, if not worse.

In 2017/18, ambulances arriving at Leicestershire hospitals had to wait more than an hour to hand over their patient 2,954 times. This compares to 913 waits of more than an hour in 2013/14.

Most of the long waits were at Leicester Royal Infirmary, where ambulances had to wait more than an hour to hand over their patient to the hospital 2,894 times, up from 909 in 2013/14.

This equated to five per cent of all ambulance handovers in 2017/18.

Across Leicestershire, there were 585 calls in 2017/18 that took more than two hours for the patient to be handed over, and three that took more than four hours.

The figures include an ambulance that took four hours and 51 minutes to hand over a Category 2 call at Leicester Royal Infirmary in January 2018, as well as a hand over of another Category 2 call that took three hours and 57 minutes at same hospital in February 2018.

A Category 2 call is one where the patient has a serious condition, such as stroke or chest pain, that may require rapid assessment and/or urgent transport.

For the most serious calls - the immediately life-threatening calls, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest, where the target response time is eight minutes or less - there were 668 incidents in 2017/18 that saw crews waiting more than an hour to hand over their patient to A&E.

Ambulances are supposed to hand over patients within 15 minutes of arriving at A&Es - so patients can be treated in hospital rather than in the back of an ambulance, and so crews can attend their next call.

However, in 2017/18, just 36 per cent of transfers from ambulance to Leicestershire A&Es took place in less than 15 minutes. For the highest priority calls, it was still only 38 per cent in 2017/18.

Dr Ian Higginson, the registrar of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and a consultant in emergency medicine, said: “It’s very distressing for us as emergency physicians not to be able to receive patients into our emergency department as quickly as they need.

“Queuing ambulances are a very clear sign of crowding in departments, as are queues in the corridors.”

Dr Rob Harwood, chair of the BMA’s consultants committee, said the most recent emergency admission figures were at a record high even before winter hits.

He said: “So when these are then combined with delays in handing over patients at A and E, it is further evidence of what the BMA has been saying for some time – we are no longer experiencing just a winter crisis in the NHS, it is now a truly year-round crisis.”