Waiting game
Ambulances waited more than an hour to hand over patients to Lanarkshire A&ES more than 1000 times last year.
Exclusive figures obtained using the Freedom of Information Act show waits of more than 60 minutes have tripled in the past three years.
Lanarkshire’s three acute hospitals — Hairmyres, Monklands and Wishaw combined — all had huge increases on their handover times according to the new stats.
In 2017/18, ambulances arriving at the three hospitals had to wait more than an hour to hand over their patient a total of 1077 times.
This compares to 353 waits of more than an hour in 2015/16.
Long waits were most common at Hairmyres, where ambulances had to wait more than an hour to hand over their patient to the hospital 450 times, up from 128 in 2015/16.
At Wishaw, ambulances waited over an hour 366 times last year, which is also a significant increase compared to the 125 times in 2015/16.
And Monklands had the lowest amount of handovers that took an hour, with 261 this year.
Across Lanarkshire however, there were 14 calls in 2017/18 that took more than two hours for the patient to be handed over, eight of which were at Hairmyres, with four at Wishaw and two at Monklands.
Heather Knox, NHS Lanarkshire Director of Acute Services said: “We work closely with the Scottish Ambulance Service to plan services and monitor service delivery.
“Over the next few months, we plan to enhance the monitoring of the turnaround times to better understand where any issues exist and to identify potential areas for improvement which we could work on together with the Scottish Ambulance Service.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Ambulance Service said: “The average turnaround time at hospitals across Scotland is around 29 minutes.
“We are working very closely in partnership with health boards across Scotland to help hospitals reduce these waiting times even further, with seven hospital liaison officers now based in hospitals to help improve the flow of patients and minimise turnaround times.
“Last year we experienced an unprecedented harsh winter but there are also a range of other reasons why an ambulance does not immediately leave A&E after arriving with a patient, from delays to a patient being admitted into A&E, ambulance staff needing to clean their vehicle or to give Police statements for example.” The prize includes the Santa Package which gives you access to some of the great activities; Christmas Storytelling, a visit to see the reindeer and meet For more information about the event, you can head to the website: https:// scotlandsthemepark.com/ event/santas-magicalwonderland/