Concern Over Excessive Ambulance Hand-Over Times

Some patients are waiting in the back of ambulances for over an hour outside Leicester Royal Infirmary’s Accident and Emergency department.

Figures released by East Midlands Ambulance Service show average handover times in the first four months of this year were over 60 minutes – in April they were 1 hour 20 minutes.

The national target is 15 minutes, with patients not expected to wait more than 30 minutes.

EMAS say the delays impact on its response times, as crews are unable to get back on the road quickly to get to other 999 calls.

Harborough health campaigner Phil Knowles obtained the figures through a Freedom of Information Request and spoke to Hfm:

East Midlands Ambulance Service

Richard Henderson, EMAS’s Chief Executive, said: “EMAS is engaged in the associated escalation meetings and welcomes the increased focus on the delays due to the unprecedented level of risk we face when we are unable to perform timely handovers of patients at receiving units, as this impacts on our ability to respond to emergency calls from people waiting in the community.

“We have identified that when hospital handover delays are high our performance against the national response standards reduces.

“When hospital handover delays increase, the length of time patients are waiting for us to arrive also increases.”

Leicester Royal Infirmary

A joint statement from Leicestershire’s NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups and University Hospitals Leicester said: “We apologise to anyone who has experienced a long wait on an ambulance at our emergency department.

“All local NHS and social care organisations are working on a shared set of actions to reduce this handover time and get ambulances back onto the road as soon as possible.”

Plans include improvements to discharge processes in hospital and better use of urgent care response services at home particularly for elderly patients.