The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Long delays in handing over patients to accident and emergency departments are putting lives at risk.
East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) has said more and more crews are having to wait up to an hour to hand over patients, which posed a “significant risk” to patient safety.
And the service the problems will only worsen as the busy winter period gets under way.
In August, more than 1,200 ambulance transfers across the region took longer than an hour, compared with 270 in 2014.
Boston’s Pilgrim Hospital had 113 delays of over an hour out of 2,126 handovers.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT) said it was working hard to reduce handover times.
It said it had to ensure “the sickest patients” were seen as a priority.
The problems were highlighted in a report for EMAS by the Hardwick Clinical Commissioning Group, which found that in 2014/15 that handover delays had “risen significantly”.
The report also found that while part of the increase could be put down to the “unprecedented level” of demand during last winter, transfer times had failed to return to previous levels.
It said that people in the community were potentially being put at risk by the delays and the availability of ambulances to attend emergency calls.
Shane Searby, paramedic group leader in Boston, said that on Saturday last week, ambulance staff were reporting delays of two and a half hours handing over at Pilgrim Hospital.
He said: “We had eight ambulances stuck at A&E because they couldn’t hand over to the nurse in charge.”
Mark Brassington, acting director of performance improvement at ULHT, said: “The long waits reported are not acceptable, but putting this into context our average handover time is about 20 minutes.”
He suggested handover times could be reduced by offering more services in the community, away from A&E departments.
The government target for ambulance crews to hand patients over to hospitals is 15 minutes.
