NHS has ‘broken’ its promise to the public over the ambulance service

The NHS has broken its “fundamental promise” to the public that life-saving emergency care will be available when they need it, a top NHS doctor has said, as ambulances continue to lose tens of thousands of hours waiting outside hospitals.

Katherine Henderson, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that what she described as the fundamental promise of the NHS to provide an ambulance in a real emergency has been “broken”.

Her comments come as the West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) University NHS Trust predicted it would lose 48,000 ambulance hours waiting outside A&E departments in July. This would make it the worst month on record.

In papers published on Thursday, WMAS said the impact of handover delays means that patients are waiting longer than needed for an emergency response, including patients in category one, which includes those needing immediate life-saving care.

It added: “This means that patients who are immediately time-critical medical emergencies do not get the response they need and may suffer significant harm or death.”

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Source: The Independent, 26 July 2022