​Ambulance Delays: how do they impact on patients' safety?

A recent BBC investigation has found that ambulance services are struggling to reach seriously ill and injured patients quickly enough, after rising demand has left the system overstretched.

The BBC’s investigation found that only one of the UK’s 13 ambulance trusts is currently meeting its targets. One of these targets being that 75% of ambulances reach patients with life-threatening conditions, such as cardiac arrests, within eight minutes.

Ambulance delays are something of which we here at PotterReesDolan are unfortunately all too well aware. Indeed we recently settled a case for a young woman who suffered an unexpected cardiac arrest at home and as a result of delays her being provided with appropriate paramedic care, via ambulance, she suffered an avoidable brain injury. Helen Dolan, who acted on behalf of the family, secured a £5.6m settlement for the young mother of two. However, her life, and that of her family, has been completely turned upside down as a result of an ambulance delay.

The BBC’s investigations found that the ‘red one’ category, for the most immediately life-threatening injuries and the ‘red two’ category, for other serious injuries, both have a target of 75% of ambulances reaching the patient within eight minutes. Those targets are not being met, with the investigation reporting in September 2016 that for red one categories 68.3% of ambulances were reaching the patient within the target eight minutes, but for red two this drops down to only 62%.

The situation is not much better in Northern Ireland or Scotland, with both reporting significant rates below target. However, in Wales, the target for most immediately life-threatening calls is 68% of ambulances reaching patients within eight minutes. In September 2016, ambulance trusts in Wales were in fact reaching patients within eight minutes in 79.5% of cases.

A number of potential explanations have been put forward and reported by the BBC. They quote Professor Jonathan Benger, the ambulance lead for NHS England as saying that a crucial factor was the increasing number of calls being handled, a figure given at 9.4m last year, almost trebling the number from a decade ago. Another big factor are delays in hospitals.

The BBC’s freedom of information request showed that over 500,000 hours of ambulance crews’ time in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was lost last year waiting for A&E staff to be free so that the patient could be handed over. This of course could potentially be seen to have a double impact upon patients who are faced with increasing delays to access ambulances due to paramedic and ambulance services being tied up at hospital then, once the paramedic has transported them to a hospital, there is delay in them receiving treatment at A&E.

It is clear that delays are increasing and my worry is how this will impact upon patients who have suffered injuries of the utmost severity and for whom a matter of minutes can be the difference between life and death. I will continue to keep a close eye on matters and hope that things start to improve.

Hannah Bottomley is a clinical negligence solicitor with PotterReesDolan. Should you have any queries about clinical negligence issues or indeed any other aspect of this article and wish to speak to Hannah or any other member of the team please contact us on 0161 237 5888 or email Hannah via the form here.