More or Less this morning talked about ambulance response times, starting with the time taken for a 999 call to be answered to the wait for an ambulance once one was dispatched. As noted before, this is not a new issue, though it is one that was not present during the years Labour looked after the NHS. This was debated in Parliament in 2016. It turns out that the time that NHS England expects an ambulance crew to be at a hospital to hand over a patient is fifteen minutes. After that, they prepare the ambulance for the next job and then go to the next patient. Now, they have to wait at A&E to offload the patient which means that they cannot collect the next patient. Patients like my Mum who had to take herself to hospital by taxi after having a suspected heart attack because no ambulance was available to collect her. Fortunately it was not her heart, but her symptoms sounded like it could be.
Sadly, I do not see this improving until some time after the next election.
