United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust: Ambulance handover delays
Handovers improving but not quick enough.
Lincolnshire hospitals are seeing improvements in ambulance handovers, but said they “are not yet where we would like to be”.
Earlier this week, a Lincolnshire Police constable tweeted how officers blue-lighted an unconscious patient 20 miles to hospital in a police van due to a three hour wait time.
He said they found ambulances “backed up” when they arrived, as further police officers were also on scene with patients while he was there.
On Tuesday, United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust Board Meeting will be told that there had been a slight reduction in handover delays of more than an hour compared to August.
In August, there were 930 over 59 minute waits compared to 885 in September (a 4.84% decrease).
The report also notes that waits of over two hours had also decreased from 517 to 426 and waits over more than four hours reduced from 123 to 100.
Despite this, overall ambulance arrivals increased by 2.6%,
A report before hospital chiefs said “early intelligence” of increasing EMAS demand had allowed for early planning and preparedness with contact throughout the day to examine active calls by district and potential conveyance site.
Ahead of the meeting, a hospital spokesperson said: “Delays in ambulance handovers to our hospitals are the result of increasing demand on our urgent and emergency care services, often with patients who now have more complex needs.
“This increase means our patients are staying much longer in our hospitals than previously experienced and challenges our ability to secure the required flow and discharge from hospital.
“Sadly, this results in a longer wait time for beds for new patients requiring acute inpatient care.”
They said the patients included those admitted from A&E, same day emergency care areas and those arriving by ambulance.
“We have seen some improvement in the number of handover delays and the length of time that ambulances wait outside our hospitals for handover,” they said.
“However, we are not yet where we would like to be, and are planning a number of actions to make further improvements to our patient journeys.”
They pointed to recent plans to expand the capacity of emergency departments and changes to capacity protocols in order to speed up patient handovers.
However, they added: “It is important to recognise that despite long waits, patients who need immediate emergency care are able to be seen and looked after in our emergency departments.”
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