Patients taken to hospital in Bristol are waiting an average of just under an hour to be handed over to hospital staff – with both the city’s main hospitals currently breaking the NHS Standard Contract because of the queues of ambulances waiting outside A&E.
Latest figures for January show that around a third of all patients arriving at both Southmead Hospital and the Bristol Royal Infirmary are waiting in ambulances outside for more than an hour – breaking a national target that no patient should have to wait that long at all.
And the latest figures from the NHS show a shocking regional inequality in the time it takes between the moment an ambulance to arrive at hospital with a patient and has formally handed over that patient to hospital staff.
The wait time is seen as a crucial measure of the state of the emergency side of the NHS – it shows how busy a hospital is if there is no room in A&E for patients to be handed over, and it also shows how much time ambulance crews are tied up waiting outside hospitals and not being on standby or answering another emergency call.
The latest figures for January, published by the NHS, reveal that the south west region as a whole has the worst ambulance handover times in the country. Across the region, almost 82 per cent of ambulance crews are waiting more than 15 minutes to hand over their patients, and 31.9 per cent are waiting more than an hour. That’s more than double the national average for England.
The south west figures can be compared to London, South Central and South East Coast areas, where less than three per cent of handovers took more than an hour. In Bristol, one in three people taken to hospital by ambulance is waiting in that ambulance outside A&E for an hour. In London it’s one in 38 people.
What is the target?
The NHS Standard Contract for this year has set a target for ambulance handovers. It states that no handovers should take longer than an hour, 95 per cent of all handovers must take no more than half an hour, and roughly two-thirds (65 per cent) must take no more than 15 minutes.
At the University Hospitals Bristol and Weston Trust, which sees ambulance handovers into Weston General, the Bristol Royal Children’s Hospital and the Bristol Royal Infirmary, the trust has failed to hit all those targets. A total of 1,226 handovers in January were more than an hour – that’s 33.1 per cent of the total – while 1,944 handovers took more than 30 minutes, which equates to more than half, or 52.6 per cent. The NHS Standard Contract states that 65 per cent of patients should not have to wait more than 15 minutes to be handed over, but at the BRI it was 2,904 who had to wait longer, or 78.5 per cent.
Of the 3,702 ambulances which arrived at one of the UHBW Trust’s hospitals to hand over a patient during January, only 798 were handed over within 15 minutes.
The handover times at Southmead Hospital, which is run by the North Bristol NHS Trust, also failed to meet the NHS Standard Contract. More than a quarter – 26.7 per cent – of handovers ran over the 60-minute mark, and more than half took longer than 30 minutes. Of the 2,782 patients taken to Southmead hospital by ambulance in January, only 582 were handed over within 15 minutes.
The mean average wait for patients reveal that, at times, hundreds were waiting for much more than an hour. At the BRI, the average wait time to be handed over was 59 minutes, while at Southmead it was 56 minutes in January.
The South West figures
The two hospitals in Bristol are actually among the better performing in the south west. Almost two-thirds of patients taken to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon waited more than an hour, for example – and the average wait time there was two hours and 25 minutes.
At the Derriford Hospital, which is run by the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, the average wait time to be handed over was nearly three hours – the highest in the country – and 54 per cent of patients waited more than an hour to be handed over to the hospital.
A total of 2,586 patients were taken by ambulance to the Derriford Hospital in January, and 2,223 of them had to wait more than a quarter of an hour. Of those, 1,808 had to wait more than half an hour, and 1,402 of them were still waiting after an hour.
At Truro’s Royal Cornwall Hospital, 89 per cent of the 2,619 patients brought in by ambulance waited more than 15 minutes to be handed over, and 74.3 per cent were still waiting after half an hour. More than half – 55.9 per cent – of patients had to wait more than an hour, and the average time people waited across the whole month was two hours 13 minutes.
The long wait times have alerted medical law firms. Sean McCann, a solicitor at Patient Claim Line, said: “Amidst a growing demand for emergency care, lengthy ambulance handover delays can be attributed to the likes of staff shortages and delays in discharging those who are deemed to be medically fit.
“This not only means that patients are being forced to wait in ambulances or on hospital corridors, but that paramedics may also be unable to attend to other emergency calls. Ambulance handover delays can cause harm to patients and, in some cases, severe harm. If you have experienced a delayed diagnosis or delayed treatment, as a result of an ambulance handover delay, you could be entitled to make a claim for compensation,” he added.
What the hospitals say
Bristol Live approached both the University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Trust and the North Bristol NHS Trust, about the latest figures. A spokesperson for the Integrated Care Board, which covers Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire responded on behalf of both trusts. “Like many other parts of the country we have had a very challenging winter with high hospital admissions and bed occupancy rates and this has impacted on our ambulance handover times,” he said.
“Reducing handover delays is a high priority for our health and care system and NHS and local authority partners are working together to improve patient ‘flow’ through our hospitals, to ensure we are able to admit patients in a timely way. We are also working together to prevent the avoidable illnesses that can lead to hospital admission in the first place, for example by encouraging vulnerable people to take up their flu and covid vaccination when offered,” he added.
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