CRITICALLY-ILL patients on Merseyside are waiting up to 40 minutes for an ambulance because there are not enough paramedics to cover meal breaks, the Daily Post can reveal.

North West ambulance bosses have admitted that paramedics manning rapid response vehicles are being forced to tend to patients for 30 to 40 minutes before an ambulance becomes available to take them to hospital. Evidence also suggests that hospitals are sometimes delaying admittance of patients arriving by ambulance to ensure they meet strict targets on how quickly they treat attendees.

According to figures from the North West Ambulance Service, turnaround time at hospitals for ambulances in Merseyside is as high as 26 minutes, which reduces the number of ambulances avail-able to respond to emergencies.

Over Christmas, NWAS said some ambulances in the North West spent two hours at hospitals, while, in the last week of Decem-ber, the Trust said it regularly had between five and nine ambulances “stacked” at hospitals.

And that problem is being made worse by meal break arrangements, which involve paramedics going back to their station before beginning the break.

An NWAS report reveals that, while it is meeting its target for getting a paramedic to emergency cases, they are often in rapid response vehicles which can’t ferry passengers on to hospitals.

It states: “The requirement to physically remove resources from availability during periods of heavy demand for meal breaks has meant that although the Category A (most serious cases) performance has been relatively met, the tail on Category B (less serious) patients is becoming extensive.

“It has also meant that rapid response vehicles have been sat with Category A patients for 30 to 40 minutes on occasion before the patient has been transported.”

Last night, critics said leaving a lone paramedic to deal with a ser-ious emergency, and the practice of making ambulances wait when they arrived at hospital, was putting undue pressure on staff.

Frank Hont, regional secretary for Unison, said: “Paramedics and ambulance staff face incredible pressure without added pressures caused by lack of resources and false targets.

“It is bound to affect the service to patients and it is through no fault of paramedics on the front-line. Yet, as a result of things like this, resourcing and targets, it is the paramedics and front-line staff who have to deal with com-plaints from patients and their families.”

A spokesman for the Trust said it was trying to deliver a model for dealing with meal break issues.

He said: “The Trust accepts that the period over which many meal breaks are taken does present it with a challenge, as it is a busy period of the day.

“NWAS, in conjunction with its trade union partners, is in the process of devising a robust meal break policy that enables the Trust to deliver high levels of patient care.”

John Pugh, Lib-Dem MP for Southport, condemned the current arrangements.

“It is pathetic that bureaucracy like this, in the form of artificially-constructed targets for ambulances and health services, is distorting good clinical practice.

“Patients are suffering in order that NHS statistics can look better.

“I imagine paramedics find this distressing because they are being put in very difficult positions.”

NWAS figures show that the longest average wait at a hospital casualty department in Merseyside by an ambulance in December was at Aintree, where it can stretch to 26 minutes.

The average wait at the Royal Liverpool Hospital and Whiston Hospital is 23 minutes, while at Arrowe Park in Wirral it is 20 minutes. Southport General Hospital is recorded at just under 22 minutes.

A spokesman for Aintree said: “Last year the Trust changed the way it triaged (assessed) patients and this helped shorten ambulance waits. However, during the period in question, A&E saw an increase in patients coming into the department and this led to unavoidable delays in admitting ambulance cases.

“The Trust is now working closely with ambulance officials to see how we can jointly improve ambulance admissions.”

The NWAS spokesman added: ““Inevitably, there will be times of high demand, when turnaround times do increase, but the Trust works hard to ensure that these are kept as low as possible.”

davidhiggerson