ondon’s ambulance chief has called for ”whole system action” to fix the NHS after figures showed that crews took an average of 45 minutes last month to respond to heart attacks and strokes.
Dr John Martin, Chief Paramedic for the London Ambulance Service (LAS), said that hot weather and air pollution created a demand for emergency services “not seen since the height of the pandemic”.
NHS figures show that the average response time for Category Two calls in London was up by 3 minutes on the previous month. It is the worst performance of any ambulance service in the country and nearly ten minutes above the national average.
Dr Martin said the start of June had been “unseasonably challenging” but that performance improved towards the end of the month.
“Hot weather and air pollution created demand we had not seen since the height of the pandemic and on our busiest day in the month, we had nearly 8,000 999 calls – the highest number since New Year’s Eve 2021 when London was experiencing a wave of Covid. To help respond to this level of demand, we maximised the number of staff in control rooms and on the road.
“Hospitals in the capital have been incredibly busy too. This exacerbated delays and we agreed with hospitals to handover patient care within a maximum of 45 minutes of our crews arriving, in order to help our crews get back on the road and care for patients more quickly.”
Daniel Elkeles, the chief executive of the London Ambulance Service (LAS), said that delays handing patients over to hospital were “the main driver” behind long waits for ambulances in the past two months.
“No one should hide from the fact that the main driver is hospitals delaying the handover of patients into their care.
“This is a shared whole system problem and the solution lies in shared whole-system action. London Ambulance Service cannot tackle this alone.”
More encouraging figures showed that ambulance crews in the capital took an average of 8 minutes and 1 second to respond to the most urgent “life or limb” calls last month. This was the second fastest response time of any region.
The LAS answered more than 131,000 calls throughout the month – by far the highest total of any region.
Hospitals in London are continuing to struggle to discharge medically fit patients and free up capacity, leading to long waits for treatment in A&E. This means paramedics are often forced to wait with patients inside an ambulance, rather than responding to calls in the community.
Last month, the Standard revealed that more patients were stuck in London hospitals waiting to be discharged than when the Government announced a £750m funding package to speed up discharges six months ago. Many beds in hospital are taken up by elderly, vulnerable patients with no social care package to be discharged into.
