Ambulance Waits Reduced By Nearly An Hour Within A Month

There has been a lot of negative press concerning ambulance waits in recent months but it has been reported this week that ambulance crews reached emergencies, such as heart attacks and strokes, one hour quicker in January than December in England.

More precisely, it took 32 minutes on average, compared to over 90 minutes the month prior. In fact, January’s average was the quickest for 19 months.

There has also been an improvement in A&E waiting times with over a quarter of patients waiting longer than four hours, this is down from more than a third of patients in December.

Since the New Year, flu and Covid hospital admission rates have also started to fall.

Although this is all very positive news, the president of The Society for Acute Medicine, Dr Tim Cooksley, said wait times are still “intolerable” and nearly four out of every ten patients waited more than four hours on trolleys in corridors due to hospitals not having enough beds available. He commented:

Are the NHS strikes going to undo all this hard work?

Prof Sir Stephen Powis, National Medical Director of NHS England, praised NHS staff for working “flat out” during the winter months and said that the improved waiting times were pleasing. However, he has warned that the current strike action taking place will inevitably reduce progress, meaning waiting times will become slower for planned hospital care.

It is no secret that the waiting list for planned hospital care has increased significantly. By the end of December, the list rose to 7.2 million, including the number of those waiting 18 months rising by 12% to the figure of 56,000.

Strike action means that tens of thousands of planned operations will now be either put on hold or cancelled. Statistics show that walkouts by nurses and ambulance staff have led to more than 40,000 bookings being rescheduled.

Comment

It is very positive to see significant reductions in ambulance and A&E wait times at the start of this year. However, these statistics cannot be considered in isolation, particularly in the context of current industrial action across the NHS.

MPs have warned that strike action will lead to “unnecessary deaths” – a terrifying prospect, particularly in the context of strikes taking place across 73 NHS Trusts in England. This shows just how essential it is that the Government takes necessary action, without delay, to secure a sustainable future of safe patient care.

Rescheduled or cancelled appointments and treatment can have potentially devastating and life-changing consequences on patients and whilst significant efforts have been made across the NHS to reduce the “Covid backlog”, it is inevitable that industrial action will only lead to delays in crucial patient care and apply additional pressure to hospitals across the country.