'Lives will continue to be lost' over Essex ambulance waits soar

NHS figures obtained from FOI requests by the Liberal Democrats showed for all but  one of England’s ambulance trusts that the 18-minute target for category 2 calls including heart attacks and strokes was missed.

NHS figures obtained from FOI requests show all but one of England's ambulance trusts regularly missed their 18-minute response time target in 2023 for category 2 calls. 
Category 2 includes emergencies relating to heart attacks and strokes. 

According to the findings, East Suffolk and the North East Essex Trust patients in Colchester and beyond with a Category 2 condition waited 45 minutes and 53 seconds for an ambulance a 56.67 per cent increase from 2019.

Those with life-threatening or serious conditions, meanwhile, had to wait nine minutes and 39 seconds for an ambulance on average - a 11.78 per cent increase from 2019.

According to the findings, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, the longest wait time a patients endured for Category 1 and Category 2 calls were one hour, 35 minutes and nine seconds and 20 hours, 38 minutes and 45 seconds, respectively.

For patients under the jurisdiction of the the Mid and South East Essex Trust, which covers Braintree and Southend, the average wait time was eight minutes and 25 seconds for Category 1 calls and 41 minutes and 45 seconds for Category 2 calls in 2023 a 6.77 and 30.6 per cent increase from 2019.

The longest wait times at the Mid and South East Essex Trust, meanwhile, were two hours, 20 minutes and 30 seconds for Category 1 and 16 hours, 49 minutes and 16 seconds.

Care - Dr Adrian Boyle, President of The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said hospitals such as Colchester did not see these type of delays ten years ago (Image: Newsquest)

A spokesman from Save Southend NHS said: “Year on year, the East of England Ambulance Service response time targets continue to worsen, causing critical delays providing timely emergency care of patients and often resulting in worsening outcomes.

“General funding gaps across the NHS coupled with long delays at A&Es to offload patients caused by continued lack of beds and staff, affects the availability of 999 ambulances.”

“That, alongside numerous paramedics leaving the gritty, draining and relentlessly harrowing frontline in favour of jobs in community and general practice, sees the Ambulance Service Trust continuing to fail response time targets. Those failures cause pain and cost lives.

“Until bed occupancy is increased in our A&Es and hospital wards, the issue will remain and lives will continue to be lost.”

Dr Adrian Boyle, president of The Royal College of Emergency Medicine – a union which covers ambulance services - believes ambulance delays are a relatively new problem.

He added: “We were not seeing the kinds of delays we do today, ten years ago. The fundamental issue is that handovers at hospitals take too long, because emergency departments are simply too full.”

“We continue to encourage decision makers to adopt the recommendations in our Resuscitate Emergency Care campaign to reduce overcrowding and provide equitable and safe emergency care for all.”

Bosses at the East of England Ambulance Service have now moved to reassure residents, saying the latest data only refers back to 2023, and since then changes have been made.

A spokesman added: "We have worked with our partners to reduce response times, and these have improved significantly since the end of last year.

"We are working on numerous ways in which we can further improve our response times and increase our resources."

The East of England Ambulance Service's frontline clinicians have increased by 300, delivering a ten per cent increase in ambulance hours.
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