The ambulance service is in a “critical” condition as crews get stuck at hospitals for more than a day, risking patients’ lives and causing huge delays in 999 calls.
A poll of ambulance services’ longest delays outside overcrowded A&E departments last month revealed that one West Midlands crew was held for 26 hours in boiling heat on June 6.
In London, also on June 6, a crew had an eight-hour, 23-minute wait.
The North West Ambulance service said their longest handover for the first two weeks of June was 9hrs, 16mins.
The Welsh Ambulance Service had a crew waiting for 26hrs, 58mins.
In the Yorkshire region, the longest hospital handover in recent weeks was on June 7 at Hull Royal Infirmary, where a crew stayed for 9hrs, 36mins.
One ambulance service worker, who did not want to be named, said last month was the “worst June ever”.
He said crews were spending hours in the backs of ambulances or next to their patients in hospitals, unable to leave until they had officially handed over their charges to clinical staff.
It means that when 999 calls come in from the public, fewer ambulances and paramedics are available.
Yorkshire Ambulance Service paramedic Kevin Fairfax, a Unison branch secretary, called the delays in getting to calls “critical” and “horrendous”.
He said: “We’ve had elderly patients sitting on the floor for hours, unable to get up due to a fractured hip or thigh. They’re sitting in their own urine.
“It’s degrading for them and when the crews do turn up they are in tears.
“We had a young lad who broke his leg playing football then sat on a field for hours waiting for us.
“We join the NHS for the patients, not the money, and we are there to help but you can do nothing about waiting times. Seeing patients deteriorate is awful. It must be costing lives.”
He also pointed out that the crisis comes in hot weather that makes patients suffer even more in ambulances, and means paramedics feel like they are suffocating in PPE gear.
He warned: “We haven’t even got to anything like the winter pressures. My members are not coping – they are psychologically struggling.
“This is what you get for years of cuts.”
Ray Gray, a Unison officer, explained: “It’s a vicious circle because the ambulance crew can’t offload into A&E because it is full of patients.
“And A&E is full because there are no beds in the hospital because the wards are full and they can’t discharge people into the community because the support services are not there.”
Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, said: “Pressures across the healthcare system have meant that some hospital handover times
are significantly extended. We are concerned about the impact this has on the availability of emergency ambulances and on patient care.”
London Ambulance Service said: “We are continuing to work closely with hospitals and NHS partners across London to help reduce delays and pressures wherever possible.”
West Midlands Ambulance Service said: “The whole of the NHS remains under severe pressure.” Lee Brooks, of the Welsh Ambulance Service, said the service is working on the factors that cause extended waits “both as an organisation and as a wider system”.
The Department of Health said: “Response times are affected by various factors. That’s why we’re taking a whole-system approach, and the NHS has allocated £150million of system funding to address pressure.
“We have provided £50m of additional funding in 2022/23 to support increased NHS 111 call-taking capacity, and we are busting the Covid backlogs by setting up surgical hubs and community diagnostic centres.”
'Mum died waiting'
A man whose mother died while she waited for an ambulance said the delays were a “crime”.
Akshay Patel, 28, called 999 at 2.30am on October 11 after Bina, 56, started struggling to breathe.
By the time an ambulance arrived at 3.27am, Bina was dead. Akshay, of Ashton-under-Lyne, Gtr Manchester, told the Mirror: “I watched my mum struggling for breath and then having a stroke and then finally having a heart attack.
“This is a crime. Staff do as much as they can but... the resources that are needed are just not there.”
MPs fell silent as his story was told at PMQs last month.
The North West Ambulance Service said it had implemented “measures to review and minimise patient harm”.
21 hours at home...and 8 at hospital
An 87-year-old waited 21 hours for an ambulance to arrive - only to be forced to queue in the vehicle for eight hours outside hospital, reports claim.
Roy Clare’s family have previously spoken of their fury after it took two days for the pensioner to be admitted to hospital after he fell from his wheelchair and cut his head.
When his daughter Diane East called for help on Tuesday June 7, she was advised that he should not be moved but told he would have to wait a whole day for an ambulance, ITV news reported earlier this month.
So Diane, who has basic nursing training, patched up her father and put him in bed.
A doctor’s visit to the OAP’s home in Southend on Sea the following evening warned he may have had a stroke and advised he should be admitted to hospital.
On Thursday morning paramedics initially told Mr Clare’s family that no ambulances were available, before three vehicles arrived for him by mistake at 2pm.
He was taken to Southend Hospital, but instead of being admitted to its Accident and Emergency unit, he had to wait in a queue of 22 other ambulances outside the hospital.
Mr Clare was finally admitted to A&E at 10:15pm on Thursday - more than eight hours after he was put in an ambulance and almost two days after his family first dialled 999.
“We thought he was in good care,” Mrs East told ITV News.
“We sent him into a situation where it was even worse than having at home care.
“Why is there such a bad situation at the hospital?”
A spokesperson for Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust told ITV News the hospital was experiencing an extremely high demand for its services.
