Ambulance handover delays equivalent of 70 days
An ambulance trust lost 1,700 hours of working time in one week in April due to vehicles waiting outside a hospital.
The BBC has discovered that the figure was reached twice during April as ambulance crews waited outside Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in Gloucester to handover patients.
That equates to about 70 days worth of waiting time each week.
The trust that runs the hospital said it was facing "significant challenges" as it dealt with "unrelenting demand".
Figures show that since the end of January, South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) has lost a minimum of 800 hours of working time each week due to ambulances having to wait outside Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, unable to get patients into A&E.
The national target for transferring patients from ambulances in to A&E is 15 minutes, but in some cases people had to wait up to 10 hours in ambulance queues in Gloucester.
Source: BBC News, 12 July 2022