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More A&Es are closing their doors to ambulances, says report

Hospitals had to close their doors to ambulances almost twice as often this winter compared with the previous three years, figures show

Hospitals had to close their doors to ambulances almost twice as often this winter compared with the previous three years, figures show.


A new report has said the number of ambulances being diverted from
A&Es has risen from 2016. Picture: PA

The number of ambulance diverts in place at emergency departments (EDs) in England hit 478 for the three-month period of December to February.

This compares to an average of 249 times over the same period in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16, a report from the Nuffield Trust showed.

The charity said the delays caused by the closures was stopping ambulance crews responding quickly to other urgent calls.

None of the three main ambulance targets for responding to calls have been hit since May 2015.

Of the 233,472 most serious category A calls received in January this year, at least 95% should have had a response within 19 minutes. However, the data showed that 29,000 calls did not receive a response within this timeframe. Just 88% of responses met the target.

Stabilisation needed

Responding to the report, RCN professional lead for acute, emergency and critical care Anna Crossley called on the government to stabilise urgent and emergency care.

'Ministers must understand how critical a category A ambulance response can be – with every extra minute waiting for it to arrive, the chances of surviving a potentially life threatening incident, such as a heart attack or stroke decrease. 

'Nursing staff report patients coming through the ambulance doors only to be forced to treat them in corridors due to lack of capacity in the hospital, leading to stark comparisons with war zones. This is not the quality of care that anybody is comfortable with providing or patients deserve.'

The report said the number of category A calls resulting in an ambulance arriving at the scene has increased by 7.4% year on year, from 2.5 million in 2011-12 to 3.3 million in 2015-16.

This demand is rising at a faster rate than emergency admissions to hospital and ED attendances.

Accountability

Five NHS trusts accounted for more than half of all the 493 ambulance diverts reported this winter, with four in the North of England.

These were Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust and South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust in the Midlands also accounted for a high number.

An NHS England spokesperson said that currently too many ambulances are dispatched to 'simply hit targets rather than attend to those patients most in need'.

'This is why we're carefully testing a change to the way in which the services can respond and will make our recommendations known in the coming weeks,' the spokesperson added.


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