Ambulance handover delays at Lincolnshire hospitals

A report before United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust said the trust had been below the agreed four-hour performance targets 11 times in 12 months up to September.

It comes as national reports from the BBC have said lives are “at risk from unacceptable ambulance waits”.

Data in ULHT board papers covering the period of August and September said there were 71 12-hour trolley waits while nearly six per cent fewer patients were triaged within 15 minutes.

Handover delays almost doubled with those lasting more than 59 minutes increasing by 294 patients in September to 629 and those waiting more than two hours increasing from 244 to 465.

East Midlands Ambulance Service, which provides transport in Lincolnshire, has also reported “significant delays” in handovers across the entire region – despite attending fewer incidents.

Reports before the board in November and September, said that in the first 19 days of October the trust took 23,667 people to hospital, compared to 25,262 last year.

In August the proportion of patients transported by EMAS was 57 per cent compared with 60.5 per cent in 2020 and 66 per cent in 2019.

Demand reportedly peaked on September 5 with around 400 calls, with crews across the East Midlands facing waits of six or seven hours at hospital.

CEO Richard Henderson, in his latest board report, said: “These delays in handover impact on our ability to respond to patients in the community in a timely manner.

“Since the beginning of the summer we have started to see the hospital handover position deteriorating significantly.