North East Ambulance Service asks patients to get hospital lift due to staff shortage
Last updated 5th Jan 2022
An ambulance service is still asking patients suffering from suspected strokes or heart attacks to get relatives to drive them to hospital following pressures on staff due to coronavirus and new year demand.
The North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) said it brought in the measure while people who should have had a crew arrive within 18 minutes were waiting on average for an hour.
Dr Mathew Beattie, medical director for North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) says:
“Patient safety is our top priority and the impact of increased activity and staff sickness, linked to the Omicron virus, meant that we needed to act to protect our response to the critically unwell over the past few days.
As a result, we proactively implemented measures from the highest level of our clinical escalation plan on Friday 31 December to avoid a further deterioration of response times for patients and minimise the risk and harm being caused to patients with potentially life-threatening illness.”
This has included alerting patients on calls that were not potentially life-threatening, and when there was a delay for an ambulance, that they could make an informed choice where it was quicker and safer for them to be taken to hospital by a relative or friend rather than wait.
Dr Beattie added:
“Under normal circumstances, we would move up and down our clinical escalation levels reactively as each point is triggered or demand reduces. The measures we took over the bank holiday weekend were implemented because we have seen activity fluctuating dramatically with surges in demand.
This was an incredibly difficult decision to take, but when patients are waiting an average of an hour for an ambulance that should be responding within 18 minutes, there is a risk for them coming to harm if they cannot get to hospital quickly.
Our performance has not returned to normal and it is still taking us too long to get an ambulance to patients, unfortunately due to this patients remain at risk which is unacceptable. Where it is safe we will continue to ask patients to make their own way to hospital however we would never ask anyone to drive themselves to hospital with a life threatening illness.”