South Western Ambulance Service blame wait times on "systemic" problems
The comment comes after we reported seriously ill patients could end up dying in GP surgeries
Last updated 12th Nov 2021
The South Western Ambulance Service says problems with wait times are systemic, after we reported they could cause patients to die in GP surgeries.
Earlier this week we heard how a Bristol GP had driven a seriously unwell six-year-old patient to hospital herself, after waiting five hours unsuccessfully for an ambulance.
You can read more about that incident here.
Now, as figures from NHS England reveal wait times for serious incidents are nearly three times as long as they should be, our regional ambulance service has told us the issue is not entirely down to them.
“We continue to experience the highest-ever level of sustained demand on our service," a spokesperson from South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust said.
“Our response times are directly affected by the time it takes us to handover patients into busy hospital emergency departments, which is longer than we have ever seen before.
“We are losing many more hours compared with recent years which causes our ambulances to queue outside hospitals and unable to respond to other patients and has an inevitable impact on the service we can provide.
"This is a health system problem which therefore demands a system solution."
Figures show severe levels of demand
New figures revealed this week show NHS 999 services had their busiest ever month in October as staff answered a record 1,012,143 calls.
Ambulance staff responded to more than 82,000 life threatening call-outs, an increase of more than 20,000 on the previous high for October in 2019 (61,561), while major A&Es treated over 1.4 million people during October – the highest ever for the month and third highest of all time.
Speaking to us earlier this week Bristol GP Doctor Lucy Pocock told us the situation is not sustainable and the government must act.
"They have to put more in place," she said.
"They have to fund community services better and social care better so we can improve the flow of patients through the hospital."
What impact is it having?
We have heard first hand how wait times are already causing patient care to deteriorate, with sources telling us this is only likely to escalate without action.
Dr Pocock said she is worried GPs could increasingly end up dealing with seriously ill patients they can neither treat, nor get to hospital.
"We're worried, because nobody wants to be in a situation where they've got a deteriorating patient," she said.
"A GP surgery isn't equipped to cope with acutely unwell people, that's not what we do...
"There is a risk that people are going to start dying in GP surgeries."
The BBC recently reported there are investigations ongoing into several deaths linked to delays, including the death of a person who suffered a cardiac arrest, before waiting more than five hours in the back of an ambulance outside Worcestershire Royal Hospital.
Another person reportedly died in the East of England after it took crews an hour to get to a call classed as immediately life threatening.
When they arrived they reportedly found the individual was already dead.
The College of Paramedics has called the situation "unacceptable" and reiterated Dr Pocock's point that lives are at risk.
“It is an absolute priority for us and our NHS partners to reduce these delays, so we can be there for our patients, while prioritising those who are most seriously injured and ill," the South Western Ambulance Service told us.
NHS national medical director Professor Stephen Powis says staff are going "above and beyond" to see patients.
What can be done?
The answer, according to Dr Pocock, is that primary care services like GP Surgeries and pharmacies must be better funded.
"Everybody always focusses on what's going in the hospitals and that's absolutely right, they're very busy and it's important we get that care right, but in order to protect the hospitals from getting overwhelmed, we need to look at the community," she told us.
"We know that 90 percent of patient contacts in the NHS happen in primary care, so you need to fund primary care properly.
"We see 90 percent of the patient contacts and we receive something like 11 percent of the NHS budget."
A lot of people, she said, would not need hospital treatment at all if there were better community services like district nurses, or rapid response teams that would enable patients to be given intravenous medication at home.
"At the other end the reason hospitals are struggling is because a quarter of their beds are being occupied by poor people who are waiting to go home but don't have any care available to be looked after at home, so they're stuck in hospital."
Anyone with a minor illness is urged to contact their local pharmacist for advice, while anybody needing advice on more serious symptoms should contact their GP in the first instance or call 111.
The 999 service should only be used for life threatening emergencies.