Ambulance crews in Wales experienced significant delays at hospitals, with one ambulance spending 28 hours outside a hospital due to an “extraordinary incident.” The Welsh Ambulance Service confirmed that at one point, 16 ambulances were parked outside the emergency department at Morriston Hospital. The service said multiple sites across Wales were affected, “specifically” in the Swansea Bay health board area.
Assistant Director of Operations at the Welsh Ambulance Service, Judith Bryce, commented on the patient handover delays outside of emergency departments, stating that it’s taking a toll on the service’s ability to respond within the community. “Approaching our declaration of an extraordinary incident, we have experienced multiple episodes of prolonged patient handover at multiple sites across Wales,” she added.
The situation was particularly challenging and affected patient dignity. It was linked to broader patient flow constraints and is expected to worsen over the winter. Lee Brooks, Director of Operations for the Welsh Ambulance Trust, confirmed that long waits for patients to move from ambulances to emergency departments had a substantial impact on the service’s ability to respond to other patients in the community.
The Welsh Ambulance Trust is creating more capacity to respond to patients with the response to red category patients nearly doubling in the last three to four years. Despite this, the trust is losing almost a week’s worth of ambulance capacity each month. Brooks asked the public to use hospital services wisely and apologised for the inconvenience caused, adding that some patients may be asked to make alternative hospital travel arrangements if an ambulance is not available
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