Nearly 40,000 patients were put at risk during July’s record 40°C heatwave due to ambulance delays across Britain, data suggests.
The alarming figures, revealed by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), show the NHS is ‘on its knees’ even without a Covid surge.
Analysis shows some 39,000 patients could have ‘come to harm’ in July after experiencing handover delays at hospitals of more than an hour.
The figure is up 11% on the previous month, when 34,000 patients were potentially harmed, The Telegraph reports.
Hours lost to 15-minute handover delays outside hospitals reached 152,000 in July – with 46,089 of them taking more than an hour.
AACE data also shows 999 call answering times were the slowest on record during the first scorcher of the summer, with the average time to respond hitting more than one minute for the first time.
It took an average of 64 seconds for emergency ambulance calls to be answered – nearly double the typical time of 28 seconds in June.
The West Midlands Ambulance Service has revealed 68 people have died since April due to delays.
In some cases patients are waiting up to 17 hours for paramedics.
Murray MacGregor, a spokesperson for West Midlands Ambulance Service, told ITV on Thursday the strains on the health and social care system are causing a domino effect of issues in the NHS.
He warned hospitals are no longer able to discharge patients quickly enough which is causing patients to stay in A&E for longer, meaning ambulances are stuck outside with patients before handing them over.
West Midlands Ambulance Service last week admitted: ‘The length of time taken to respond to you is deeply upsetting and is not the level of service the trust wants to deliver.
‘However, the volume of hospital handover delays currently being experienced every day across the region means that the trust is unable to respond to the patients in a timely manner because the crews are delayed in handing over care of their patients to the staff at the hospitals.’
NHS horror stories during July’s blistering weather included one ambulance crew being forced to wait 26 hours outside a hospital – with patients facing 48-hours inside for beds – as waits hit boiling point.
Workers warned they were facing ‘serious pressure’ as the country baked under unprecedented temperatures, with another crew saying they suffered an eight-hour hospital admission delay in June.
Yorkshire Ambulance Service’s Kevin Fairfax, also a Unison branch secretary, said the delays were hitting staff’s mental health.
He added: ‘We haven’t even got to anything like the winter pressures. My members are not coping – they are psychologically struggling… we join the NHS for the patients, not the money, and we are there to help but you can do nothing about waiting times. Seeing patients deteriorate is awful. It must be costing lives.’
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