Labour A&E summit: Crisis grows as new data reveals huge increase in ambulance queues outside A&E
In the last year, an extra 40,000 emergency patients were trapped in the back of an ambulance outside full A&E departments for upwards of half an hour – taking the total to more than a quarter of a million.
On Tuesday 10th December, Labour will hold a summit with A&E and ambulance staff to discuss the pressures on the NHS frontline.
The numbers of waiting ambulances at England’s hospitals were released to Labour under the Freedom of Information Act:
Period Number of ambulance queues
September 2011 – September 2012 215,117
September 2012 – September 2013 255, 640
The number of patients held in ambulances outside A&Es for longer than 30 minutes after arrival has more than doubled in recent years. An FOI request revealed that in the period April 2010-April 2011, 99,000 patients experienced such delays.
Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, said:
“These figures reveal that ambulance services were struggling to cope before the winter has even begun. Thousands of frail, older people are being wrongly held in the backs of ambulances outside A&E because hospitals are full. And yet David Cameron and his ministers deny that A&E is in crisis.
“This dangerous complacency can’t go on. That is why, in the absence of leadership from the Government, Labour is today holding an A&E Summit in Westminster to hear directly from front-line staff and identify measures that may help ease the pressure.
“With ambulances stuck in queues, large swathes of England are being left without adequate ambulance cover. That is why response times are getting worse and patients are facing agonising waits for ambulances to arrive.
“David Cameron’s fingerprints are all over this A&E crisis, his failure to face up to it is now having a serious knock-on effect on ambulance services and is yet more proof that you cannot trust him with the NHS. He must act now if all 999 calls are to receive the right response this winter.”