Ambulance bosses calling for more hospital beds and care home places
Around 1,000 hours of work time was last in Gloucestershire last week because of hand over times
Ambulance bosses say more hospital beds and care home places are needed as around 1,000 hours of work time was lost while patients waited to be handed over to emergency departments in Gloucestershire last week.
The ambulance service is under “intense and sustained” pressure across the South West. And patients are experiencing on average handover waits of more than an hour and 12 minutes when they should be transferred into care within 15 minutes.
Some 10,000 hours were lost last week to handover delays across the region. This is up from 360 hours during one week in 2020. Around 10% of the hours lost last week were attributed to Gloucestershire.
South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust chief executive Will Warrender told councillors yesterday (12/07) that the handover delays remain their biggest challenge.
He said the bottom line is that there simply needs to be greater availability of beds in hospitals and care homes and more support for patients in their own home.
Speaking at the health overview and scrutiny committee, Mr Warrender said the ambulance service is working closely with hospital and care providers to tackle the problem.
“Our service remains under intense sustained pressure and performance, I’m afraid, has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. That, of course, means very sadly that some of our patients are experiencing long waits for an ambulance.
“We are extremely concerned about the impact to our patients and we are absolutely resolute in our focus to address that. But the answer to delivering the service that we are commissioned to deliver is not easily arrived at.
“Handover delays remain our single biggest challenge at this time. A hospital emergency department should accept the transfer of a patient into their care from the ambulance service within the national standard time of 15 minute.
“If not, then a handover delay occurs and the patient remains with the ambulance service until the hospital accepts the handover of care.”
He gave a few figures to illustrate the scale of the problem and explained what the ambulance service is doing to alleviate the problem.
“Last week we lost close to 10,000 hours in one single week to handover delays. That is across the South West region. Two years ago we lost 360 hours in one week. So there’s an order and scale of magnitude there that is considerable.
“Regionally, the South West is the most challenged region across the country. In May, the average handover time for patients across the country was 37 minutes and in the South West it was one hour and 12 minutes.
“Last week, if you look at Gloucester alone, of those 9,900 hours we lost, about 10% were attributable to your particular part of the region. Handover delays remain the main barrier to achieving our national standard ambulance response times. "
“We continue to work very closely with hospitals across the region and of course Gloucester and Cheltenham are no different to ensure our crews can get back out on the road to respond to other 999 calls.”
He explained how the trust has introduced officers to liaise between the hospital and ambulances at emergency departments to assist with prioritising patients to be handed into hospital care.
Mr Warrender also said they have more paramedics and clinicians than ever working to remotely triage patients in their 999 call centres to avoid unnecessary attendance to emergency departments.
“Handover delays reflect blockages in the system and in the flow of patients through the health and social care system. That means a whole system response is required and we continue to work extremely closely with all system partners across the seven integrated care systems in the South West to achieve that. "