Patients face hour-long ambulance delays at Hereford A&E

The Wye Valley NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said at 10.53am on Thursday (December 8) that there were 73 patients in the emergency department, with 31 yet to be seen.

The current longest waiting time to first be seen by a doctor is 10 hours, 2 minutes and 23 seconds – with patients possibly needing to wait longer than this for actual treatment.

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It comes as the latest NHS data shows the number of people waiting for more than an hour to leave an ambulance and be handed over to the hospital.

In the week to Sunday (December 4), the most up-to-date figures available and published today (Thursday), 41 of the 330 patients arriving by ambulance were kept waiting for more than 60 minutes.

On top of another 50 waiting between 30 minutes and one hour, the NHS figures show that 54 hours were lost to handover delays.

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The NHS target is that all handovers of patients between ambulances and A&E must take place within 15 minutes.

The picture last week was better than the week before, with the week ending Sunday, November 27 seeing 47 of the 342 patients arriving by ambulance kept waiting for more than an hour.

Some 57 waited between 30 minutes and one hour, with 70 hours lost to handover delays.

A handover delay does not always mean a patient has waited in the ambulance.

They may have been moved into an A&E department but staff were not available to complete the handover.

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Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said about the national picture: "These new figures show the NHS is facing a perfect storm, with winter virus cases rapidly increasing alongside ongoing pressures in emergency care and hugely constrained bed capacity.

"We have already said we expect this to be the NHS's most challenging winter yet, which is why we started preparing earlier than ever before with extensive plans in place to deal with winter boosting bed capacity, including more than 40 control centres to track and manage demand 24/7, which are now live across England."

Patricia Marquis, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) director for England, said: "With more than 13,000 patients a day stuck in hospitals because the community and social care they need to be safely discharged is unavailable, it's easy to see why health and care is at breaking point.

"Combined with a record 47,000 nurse vacancies across the NHS in England, this is precisely the reason why our members have decided to strike – because the workforce gaps and being underpaid have made care unsafe."

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