Mp slams ambulance service
MP SAVAGES NWAS IN PARLIAMENT – CALLING IT A ‘SHAMBLES’ THAT ‘PUTS LIVES AT RISK’
THE ‘shambolic’ state of the North West Ambulance Service was described in stark detail in Parliament.
Patients’ lives are being put at risk ‘on a daily basis’ because of a ‘52 weeks of the year crisis’ in the service, Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd said in a debate. He told the House of Commons that figures he had obtained showed how:
One in four ambulances attending the most serious incidents do not have a paramedic on board;
The average call-out time for the most serious incidents is 11 minutes, compared to a target of eight minutes, while the average call-out time for incidents classified in the next most serious category is 44 minutes, compared to a target of 18 minutes;
Over the last six years the number of incidents classified as most serious has increased by 50 per cent, but in the same time the number of paramedics has increased by just 16pc.
Mr Lloyd also told how patients are being forced to wait for hours in ambulances outside Greater Manchester hospitals because of bed shortages. On one occasion last month an ambulance waited for more than 10 hours outside Fairfield Hospital in Bury, while on January 3 an ambulance had to wait for eight hours and 50 minutes outside North Manchester General before the crew could discharge their patient. Mr Lloyd described NWAS as the ‘worst-performing’ ambulance trust in England ‘in terms of its ability to hit its targets.’
“The sad reality is that North West Ambulance Service is a shambles”, he added. “That, of itself, underlies something much more serious – as a shambles, it is of course putting people’s lives at risk. This is simply unacceptable in modern Britain.” Mr Lloyd praised frontline staff, saying he had ‘absolute admiration’ for their work, but was highly critical of NWAS management and called on the government to intervene.
“I am bemused by the incompetence of the management of the North West Ambulance Service, who do not seem able to give me even semi-credible answers to this crisis,” he said. “Ministers now need to seize the opportunity – and possibly even seize the throats of those who manage the process – to make them begin to deliver.
“The complete incompetence of health ministers and a conspiracy of silence by ambulance trust leaders are putting lives in danger on a daily basis. The word crisis may be overused but it is unfortunately all too real. This is not a winter crisis – this is a 52 weeks of the year crisis, and the government must take action to stop it from getting worse.”
Patients had also been ‘lied to’ during the controversial closure of
the accident and emergency department at Rochdale Infirmary in April 2011, which had put even more pressure on the service in Greater Manchester, said Mr Lloyd.
During a public consultation on the plans health bosses gave assurances that a paramedic would be on board every ambulance attending the most serious incidents. But, Mr Lloyd said, that was an ‘illusion.’
He added: “My constituents were lied to – I think I can use that term – because there was no circumstance under which that promise could ever have been delivered.
“We were told at the time, ‘Don’t worry – you’ll have to travel a little bit further, but you’ll be travelling with highly skilled paramedics.’ One in four of the most serious category calls across the north-west do not have a paramedic in attendance, because we do not have enough paramedics in the service.”
Health minister Stephen Barclay told the debate the NHS was dealing with ‘unprecedented demand,’ adding that the NWAS, which last year was given a ‘Requires Improvement’ rating by England’s chief inspector of hospitals, recruited an extra 167 paramedics in 2017 and had a vacancy rate of 2.4 per cent, one of the lowest in the country.
He added: “We recognise that the performance of the North West Ambulance Service... is not good enough, and that is why NHS Improvement, NHS England and commissioners are closely engaged with the trust to ensure that it adapts successfully to the new performance framework.”