Invest in our NHS

Emergency health services are at breaking point writes Cllr Maggie Kellman, our Chesterfield Lib Dem spokesperson on Health and Wellbeing. Record long ambulance waits are leaving vulnerable patients waiting for ambulances to arrive, and then often getting stuck in queues outside hospitals for hours, waiting for the treatment they need. People are being left scared, panicked, and often with worsening symptoms.

Maggie points out that "Ambulance staff, like all NHS and health workers in Chesterfield do an amazing job working tirelessly to keep us all safe every day of the year. And this is against a back drop of unprecedented demand, enormous staff shortages, a chronic lack of hospital beds and a crisis in adult care provision.

But the Government has run ambulance services into the ground. They have completely failed to act on warnings that ambulance services are struggling to maintain a safe and timely service. Our wonderful health staff are under immense pressure, and things are only continuing to get worse. This is unacceptable."

National NHS guidelines say patients should be transferred from an ambulance to an emergency department within 15 minutes. This clock starts ticking when the ambulance arrives outside the A&E department and ends when the clinical handover of the patient to A&E staff has been completed.

Statistics show that ambulances arriving at Chesterfield Royal Hospital often have to wait to handover their patients to the Accident and Emergency team. On 1 st April for example 72 people arrived by ambulance and 9 waited over 30 minutes for their handover. Our NHS staff and patients are being catastrophically let down by this governments woeful neglect of the NHS.

As one paramedic said to me "queuing at hospital is both frustrating and draining. You're constantly aware that while you are in that queue, the calls waiting are growing all the time. Arriving on scene to patients who have been lying on the floor for hours waiting for a crew is heart-breaking"

After months of failing to get a grip on the ambulance crisis, it's clear that the Government has no clue on what to do. The very least the Conservatives can do is start the process to help the millions left stranded on waiting lists, and prevent the devastating loss of loved ones waiting for ambulances that arrive too late or get stuck in queues at hospitals.

Notes:

Daily Hospital Situation - patients arriving by ambulance and Ambulance delays in Handover UEC-Daily-SitRep-Web-File-Timeseries.xlsx (live.com)

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