Birmingham: Husband details wife's seven hour wait for ambulance

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Patients in England are waiting longer for ambulances as NHS targets have been missed, new data shows. The average response time for a Category 1 call was nine minutes and two seconds in April, according to the latest available statistics from NHS England. This is the most urgent category for ambulances and is used for immediate responses to a life-threatening condition, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest.

Ambulance trusts are supposed to respond to Category 1 calls in seven minutes on average, according to the NHS.

The target for all incidents is to respond to 90 percent of Category 1 calls in 15 minutes, however this figure was over 16 minutes in April.

Waiting times last month did decrease slightly compared to March when the average was nine minutes and 35 seconds.

From April 2018 to May 2021, ambulance response times for urgent calls were generally close to being seven minutes or hit the target.

However, the past 12 months have seen an uptick in how long patients in critical conditions must wait to be taken to hospital.

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The struggle facing England’s ambulances has been laid bare in stark terms by Mark Docherty, of West Midlands Ambulance Service.

The nursing director has warned that his service will stop responding to 999 calls altogether this summer.

Speaking to the Health Service Journal (HSJ) this week, he said: “Around August 17 is the day I think it will all fail.

“I’ve been asked how I can be so specific, but that date is when a third of our resources (will be) lost to delays, and that will mean we just can’t respond.

“Mathematically it will be a bit like a Titanic moment. It will be a mathematical (certainty) that this thing is sinking, and it will be pretty much beyond the tipping point by then.”

He added: “It would make me the happiest person in the world if everyone in the system proves to me that actually the ambulance service in the West Midlands isn’t going to fail on August 17, and I’ve got it completely wrong.”

The ambulance chief highlighted the tragic death of Jamie Rees, 18, from Rugby, in Warwickshire, who died from cardiac arrest in the town on New Year’s Eve 2021 after waiting for paramedics for more than 17 minutes from when his friends called 999.

Mr Docherty was due to speak about the heart-breaking case this week at a meeting concerning patient safety.

Jamie’s mother, Naomi Issit, told the HSJ that her son, who had been watching a fireworks display, should have had a better ambulance service and warned of other patients “dying needlessly”.

She said: “All we can do for Jamie now is to get something changed. The thought that this could happen to someone else just strikes fear in us.”

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“It’s bad enough when elderly people are dying needlessly but he was 18.

“He had his whole life ahead of him, and it’s just torn away from him, and nobody seems to want to change anything to put that right.”

In his interview, Mr Docherty also claimed that the Care Quality Commission, the regulator of health and social care in England, has not released notices for ambulance handover delays to improve.

The nursing director’s service increased its risk rating for handover delays to a record 25 last year.

He said: “The 25 reflects that patients are dying every day that shouldn’t be dying every day.

“Their deaths are entirely predictable, and of a scale that means we need to be taking this really seriously.”

Responding to Mr Docherty’s remarks, an NHS spokesman told The Telegraph: “The NHS has been working hard to reduce ambulance delays and £150 million of additional system funding has been allocated for ambulance service pressures in 2022-23.

“There is no doubt the NHS still faces pressures, and the latest figures are another reminder of the crucial importance of community and social care, in helping people in hospital leave when they are fit to do so, not just because it is better for them but because it helps free up precious NHS bed space.”

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