Paramedics in England missing 117,000 urgent calls each month, as CQC warns of ‘worrying new status quo’
Paramedics in England cannot respond to 117,000 urgent 999 calls every month because they are stuck outside hospitals looking after patients, new figures show.
The sheer amount of time ambulance crews had to wait outside A&E units meant they were unavailable to attend almost one in six incidents.
673 patients had to wait 10 hours or more to be handed over to A&E staff – NHS guidelines say no one should wait more than 15 minutes.
45,000 patients were delayed for at least an hour and 21,000 for at least two hours – just under the highest numbers ever seen.
While crews spent 558,000 hours attending incidents, they were unable to complete another 117,000 “job cycles”, which equates to 21% of total ambulance capacity – huge rises on the 45,000 job cycles or 7% of capacity seen in October 2019.
Paramedics in England missing 117,000 urgent calls each month, as CQC warns of ‘worrying new status quo’Paramedics in England cannot respond to 117,000 urgent 999 calls every month because they are stuck outside hospitals looking after patients, new figures show.The sheer amount of time ambulance crews had to wait outside A&E units meant they were unavailable to attend almost one in six incidents.673 patients had to wait 10 hours or more to be handed over to A&E staff – NHS guidelines say no one should wait more than 15 minutes.45,000 patients were delayed for at least an hour and 21,000 for at least two hours – just under the highest numbers ever seen.While crews spent 558,000 hours attending incidents, they were unable to complete another 117,000 “job cycles”, which equates to 21% of total ambulance capacity – huge rises on the 45,000 job cycles or 7% of capacity seen in October 2019. Continue reading…