Ambulance delays continue as calls hit record high

The average wait for an ambulance in the West Midlands continued to surge last month as the number of 999 calls hit a record high.

Latest figures show West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) missed several targets in July for the amount of time it took to respond time to 999 calls.

The region’s ambulance service missed the seven-minute response target for the most serious emergency calls by 46 seconds but was on-target for meeting 90 per cent of the most life-threatening ‘category one’ calls within 15 minutes.

However, the average wait for an ambulance for people suffering strokes, heart attacks and major burns was an hour longer than the 30 minutes than it is expected to be.

Patients across the West Midlands were waiting almost seven hours for an ambulance on average in July in response to ‘urgent’ calls for and the wait for a response to ‘non-urgent’ 999 calls was more than seven-and-a-half hours.

West Midlands Ambulance Service had an extremely busy and record-breaking July taking 162,574 calls – more than a third more calls than it did in the same month in non-Covid 2019.

The service also set a record for its busiest day during the month when 6,418 emergency calls were made on July 19 – far higher than the average of around 4,000 calls it usually has on its busiest days.

Figures also show that 17 of the ambulance service’s 20 busiest days ever all took place last month – with warmer weather, Euro 2020, and an increase in Covid cases across the region to blame for the rise in 999 calls – with the remaining three busiest days occurring in June.

The average ambulance response time in the West Midlands for the most serious 999 calls was the third quickest in the country in July behind London and the North West.

A spokesman for WMAS said: “As a service, we received a record number of calls in July, but continued to treat patients who needed our help.

“Like our colleagues in hospitals and other parts of the NHS, our crews are working flat out with many offering to work additional shifts to help meet the current level of demand, which is far higher than we have ever seen in the past. We are working with each hospital to reduce handover delays so that our crews can respond to the next incident as quickly as possible, but all patients continue to receive clinical care until they are handed over.

“We would encourage anyone who needs urgent care to go to NHS 111 Online or the NHS App so that the best treatment option for can be determined.”

Figures show the average response time for the most serious 999 calls in the West Midlands was seven minutes and 46 seconds in July – missing the seven-minute target.

The service did meet the target for responding to 90 per cent of ‘category one’ calls within 15 minutes recording an average response time of 13 minutes and 35 seconds in the month but it did increase from 12 minutes and 33 seconds in June and 12 minutes in June 2019.

The ambulance service also missed targets for ‘category two’ calls – which include emergencies such as strokes, heart attacks and major burns – recording a 30-minute average response in July and above the 18-minute target.