The hospitals with the worst ambulance handover delays
One in four patients in England had to wait more than an hour to be transferred from an ambulance to the emergency room last week, drastically below Government targets.
Care leaders warned the NHS was “dangerously close to full overheating” and said the figures suggested “there is absolutely no gap in the system”.
Data from NHS England shows a total of 16,379 handover delays of more than an hour were recorded in hospital trusts last week.
NHS Trusts in England aim for 95% of all ambulance handovers to be completed within 30 minutes and 100% within 60 minutes.
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Among trusts that reported at least 500 ambulance arrivals last week, the highest proportion of patients waiting longer than an hour to be handed over was 58% at both University Hospitals Bristol & Weston (381 out of 655 patients) and hospitals from Gloucestershire (345 out of 595).
This was followed by Northern Lincolnshire & Goole with 53% (311 of 590 patients), University Hospitals of Leicester with 52% (446 of 865), University Hospitals of North Midlands with 51% (333 of 651), Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital 50% ( 271 out of 540) and University Hospitals Dorset also 50% (409 out of 817).
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Patricia Marquis, Principal of the Royal College of Nursing for England, said: “Health and care come under enormous pressure in the run up to Christmas. These numbers suggest that there is absolutely no slack in the system, which is dangerously close to complete overheating.
“A key part of the problem is that the vast majority of hospital beds are occupied – around 95% – including thousands of patients who can be discharged. The lack of community and social care means they will spend this Christmas in the hospital.
“The root cause of this is record nursing job vacancies in the NHS and tens of thousands more in health and social care. The only way ministers can fix this is by addressing record nursing job openings and properly valuing the profession, paying nurses fairly to retain and hire the staff patients need.”
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Patients’ association chief executive Rachel Power said the situation was “complex” and difficult to resolve quickly.
She told the BBC: “The crisis that the NHS has been in for many months stretches from people waiting for an ambulance to people stuck in hospital who cannot be discharged because they have none at home social care is available.
“If hospitals cannot discharge the medically healthy from the hospital, emergency departments cannot move patients who need a hospital bed to a ward, and paramedics cannot transfer patients waiting in ambulances to emergency room workers.
“For patients, the situation is frustrating and scary.”
