Doctors are warning that accident and emergency departments are on the 'edge of a precipice', with patients forced to wait in ambulances for up to 11 hours outside hospitals. Paramedics across Britain have reported queues of up to 20 ambulances waiting to transfer patients into emergency departments operating at full capacity.
Every ambulance service in the country is now at the highest level of alert, the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE) said this weekend. Martin Flaherty, the organisation's managing director, said: '[The association] remains extremely concerned about the unprecedented levels of hospital handover delays which are occurring across the UK.'
A patient died last Monday after suffering a suspected heart attack in the back of an ambulance which had been queueing for more than two hours outside James Paget University Hospital in Norfolk. A hospital spokesperson said the patient was moved into A&E but 'sadly died in the department'.
Worcestershire Royal hospital, Royal Shrewsbury hospital, Norfolk and Norwich university hospital and Darlington memorial hospital have experienced some of the longest handover delays. National guidelines say patients should be transferred from an ambulance to an emergency department within 15 minutes.
West Midlands ambulance service said its longest handover delay in August and September at Worcestershire Royal was 11 hours and 46 minutes. It said three crews waited more than 11 hours in August to transfer their patients who stayed in the back of the vehicles.
Dr Ian Higginson, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: 'The last thing you want when you're sick, frightened or in distress is to be waiting in an ambulance outside an emergency department. There has been a failure in the NHS to deal with this chronic problem.'
