\n The aim is that no ambulance will wait longer than 45 minutes to transfer patients into the hospital.\n<\/p>\n
\n West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) crews across the region lost more than 50,000 hours to handover delays in January – more than any other ambulance trust in England.\n<\/p>\n
\n MEETING: Vivek Khashu, director of strategy and engagement at WMAS, spoke to councillors (Image: Phil Wilkinson-Jones\/LDRS)\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe next highest was around 27,000 – that\u2019s how much of an outlier we are in the country,\u201d said Vivek Khashu, director of strategy and engagement at WMAS. \u201cWe are the worst by far.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Around 6,500 hours were spent waiting outside hospitals in Worcestershire and Herefordshire.\n<\/p>\n
\n Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust is now introducing maximum waits of 45 minutes for ambulances, a policy Mr Khashu said has successfully reduced handover delays in other parts of the country.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cAt the moment we have patients waiting seven or eight hours or longer,\u201d he told a meeting of Worcestershire County Council\u2019s health overview and scrutiny committee.\n<\/p>\n
\n Panel chair Karen May questioned how realistic the target was.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cHow do you keep taking hours off the waiting time?\u201d she asked.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Khashu said it would be a gradual process with a target of four hours in the first week, decreasing to 45 minutes by the fourth week.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere has to be a credible lead-in time, it\u2019s not going to change overnight,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Simon Adams of healthcare champion Healthwatch Worcestershire said patients in ambulances outside the hospital were \u201cbetter cared for than those in corridors in the emergency department\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Khashu said: \u201cWhat about the people who don\u2019t get an ambulance? The person who has called 999 and is stuck on the floor gets nothing.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t just push a patient into the hospital and walk away. However, crews have to be empowered to walk away when the 45 minutes is reached.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n He said WMAS wants to reach the standard handover target time of 15 minutes.\n<\/p>\n
\n Chris Douglas, chief operating officer at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: \u201cImproving ambulance handover times remains a priority for us, as we know how important it is that we do everything we can to get ambulance crews back on the road to deal with patients needing urgent care in the community.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cOver the next few weeks teams across our hospitals will be focussed on finding new ways working to further improve ambulance handover times.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe also continue to work closely with our partners across the local health and care system to ensure that patients are able to leave hospital as soon as they are fit to do so because that is key to freeing up beds and easing pressure on our emergency departments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The aim is that no ambulance will wait longer than 45 minutes to transfer patients into the hospital.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-420661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}