Patient had to wait 24 hours for ambulance to turn up

A PATIENT in the North East was forced to wait almost 24 hours for an ambulance, shocking new figures have revealed.

Figures obtained by the BBC show that four of the five longest delays involving the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) were hospital requests for patients waiting to go home.

The service said this happened so that lifethreatening calls could take priority.

However, it admitted that a fifth delay was caused by “human error” and an investigation was launched.

The longest wait recorded by the NEAS was 23 hours and 55 minutes.

Douglas McDougall, strategic head of operations at NEAS, said delays of this length are “rare but clearly unacceptable”.

He added: “Each of the cases highlighted have been investigated. Of the five incidents, four were hospital requests for patients being cared for in the safety of the hospital waiting to go home. They also required specialist equipment and crews due to their specific needs.

“Although we aim to reach these types of patients as quickly as possible, a patient who is in a serious or life-threatening condition within the community must always take priority.

“The fifth case was found to have been caused by human error, resulting in additional training for the staff member involved to ensure the correct procedure is followed in future.

“The investigation found no harm was caused to the patient as a result of the delay and they received an apology.

“Over the last year, we have integrated our clinical services with our patient transport service, which enables us to better match up the skill mix of our frontline crews to the needs of our patients, thereby reducing delays.

“We are currently meeting three out of the four response standards, ensuring the most timecritical patients are attended to quickly, and are working with our commissioners to meet all four as quickly as possible.”

The longest delays in the UK were recorded by the Welsh Ambulance Service, which kept four patients waiting for more than 50 hours.

Lucy Watson, from the Patients Association, told the BBC: “Everybody should be getting the services that they need.

“We know that demand has gone up on all health services as our population is getting older, and we need to see of investment increasing.”