NHS ambulance wait figures prompt call to tackle shortages

Almost a million people waited at least half an hour for an ambulance after having a medical emergency such as a heart attack or stroke last year, NHS figures show.

Ambulance crews responding to 999 calls in England took more than 30 minutes to reach patients needing urgent care a total of 905,086 times during 2019–20. Of those, 253,277 had to wait at least an hour, and 35,960 – the equivalent of almost 100 patients a day – waited for more than two hours.

In addition to heart attacks and strokes, the figures cover patients who had sustained a serious injury or trauma or major burns, or had developed the potentially lethal blood-borne infection sepsis.

Under NHS guidelines, ambulances are meant to arrive at incidents involving a medical emergency – known as category 2 calls – within 18 minutes.

The Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who obtained the figures using freedom of information laws, said: “It’s deeply shocking that such huge numbers of seriously ill patients have had to wait so long for an ambulance crew to arrive after a 999 call. It shows the incredible pressure our ambulance services were under even before this pandemic struck.

“Patients suffering emergencies like a heart attack, stroke or serious injury need urgent medical attention, not to be left waiting for up to two hours for an ambulance to arrive. These worryingly long delays in an ambulance reaching a seriously ill or injured patient could have a major long-term impact on their health.”

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Source: The Guardian, 16 August 2020