Clinical Negligence Solicitors

Ambulance patients can sometimes face long delays before they are seen by accident and emergency staff.

Ambulance staff are forced to wait with patients while A&Es attempt to see the newly arrived patients. A&Es are so heavily inundated that the average time taken to see patients after they’ve arrived on the ambulance has vastly risen. This has been shown in data acquired by the Labour Party.

The Labour Party, under a freedom of information request, obtained data which showed that people having to wait over an hour between the ambulance and being seen by A&E, had almost tripled in two years.

NHS bosses have blamed “increasing demand” for services as the problem. The ideal average time for a hand over from ambulance to A&E staff should be 15 minutes or less. However, in 2015-2016 over 76,000 people waited over an hour to be seen by A&E staff after arriving at the hospital via ambulance.

Katarina Santos-Brazell , a clinical negligence solicitor at Duncan Lewis states that “there has always and always will be pressure on the NHS to constantly deliver. What is interesting is we have only seen the figures for all waits between 2015-2016, but the data available doesn’t clarify if those patients were urgent or non-urgent in terms of the medical treatment required. It needs to be noted that some people call for an ambulance not because their medical need is urgent but because they cannot physically get to the hospital.”

With the new BBC hit show Ambulance gracing the homes of many, we are seeing how frequently the ambulance services are called for non-emergencies, such as slips and falls, due to failures in other NHS departments (like care services). Statistics show that ambulances made 4.7 million journeys to A&E units last year. That equates to over half the population of London using the ambulance service last year.

The ambulance crews have stated that the most seriously ill patients will be prioritised, but it’s still showing that there are severe pressures on the system.

The lack of space and A&E staff available means that the ambulance crew must wait with the patient. This then makes them unavailable for further 999 calls, leaving real emergencies waiting. In some cases, ambulance crews take over multiple patients to allow their co-workers to return to the road.

Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth has said that the figures show the “scale of the crisis” facing the NHS. He added: “it is clear that this government has failed to grasp what is happening in our overstretched hospitals.” It is clear there is a crisis in A&Es with units being “overwhelmed”. This can only be down to the shortage of funds given to the NHS.

The Department of Health has said that it expects hospital and ambulance trusts to “work closely” together in the hope that this will address the issue.

Katarina adds: “these long waits are a concern, and anything over 15 minutes is not acceptable and could potentially lead to malpractice claims. Evidently there is a lot of pressure on the A&E and ambulance services. This must be rectified if our government wants to reduce clinical negligence cases.”

Duncan Lewis’ clinical negligence team has significant experience acting in claims for children and adults who have suffered profound and permanent brain, spinal or neurological injuries and associated disabilities as a consequence of failings in medical care in both NHS and private hospitals. Engage in claims and inquests arising from obstetric, neo-natal, paediatric, anaesthetic, neurological, spinal, surgical, cardiac and emergency care and consequent disability resulting from these.

If you, or anyone else, have been affected by the negligence of either the NHS or private health systems, don’t hesitate to call Duncan Lewis’ Clinical (Medical) Negligence Solicitors on 020 7923 4020