CRITICALLY ill heart attack and stroke patients are facing a deadly lottery in 999 waiting times, The Sun on Sunday reveals today.
Our probe found your postcode can add up to 30 minutes to the time it takes for an ambulance to arrive — and patients in Wales have waited 30 hours to reach A&E.
Every second counts in an emergency, yet many people are now routinely waiting more than an hour for care.
Services are being crippled by staff shortages, funding cuts and a surge in demand post-Covid, while one ambulance boss says things are so bad that the system could collapse this summer.
Mark Docherty, of West Midlands Ambulance Service, warned patients were “dying every day” in England because of the crisis.
In Scotland, services are close to breaking point and are in crisis across the Labour-run NHS Trusts in Wales, while health officials in Northern Ireland warn patients to expect FIVE YEARS of misery before anything improves.
Dr Adrian Boyle, Vice President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told The Sun on Sunday: “There is a crisis in urgent and emergency care. Patients are waiting for long periods for an ambulance, in the back of an ambulance outside Accident and Emergency, and in A&E waiting for a bed. They are coming to harm. Patients are distressed. Staff are exhausted.
“We urgently need action from political leaders. We are failing patients.”
The state of services was brought into sharp focus this year by Dame Deborah James, 40, nearly bled to death due to 999 delays.
The terminally-ill bowel cancer sufferer said only the actions of husband Seb saved her life when he rushed to their home in West London and took her to hospital as she faced a 30-minute delay.
Analysis of official data by the Local Government Association shows average wait times in England for the most urgent category one calls — which includes heart attack victims and those who have suffered a severe allergic shock — was 9min 13sec.
The NHS target is seven minutes.
In some areas, patients classed in category two — less critical but linked to serious conditions such as strokes and severe burns — face waits of more than three times the Government’s 18-minute target.
Recent analysis of NHS data by the Liberal Democrats found people living in the South West face average wait times of 11min 38sec compared to 7min 9sec in London.
Patients in the East of England wait 11min 33sec on average, while in Yorkshire it is 9min 49sec.
Regional waiting times for category two calls are even more stark. In the South West, patients wait an average 1hr 13min, compared to 46min 56sec in Yorkshire — 30 minutes more.
It isn’t just ambulance waiting times that are rising. Last month more than 37,000 people waited two minutes or longer for an answer to a 999 call, compared to 1,500 in April 2021.
Details of waiting times emerged in figures released by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives.
Leading physician Karol Sikora said: “So much resource has been spent on the pandemic we now need to get back to the normal business of healthcare.”
In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the 999 system is also under “tremendous pressure”, doctors say.
Across the Labour-run Welsh trusts, the ambulance service is in crisis.
Just 51 per cent of people calling with life-threatening conditions were reached within eight minutes in March. The target is 65 per cent.
Ambulances in Wales are then facing wait times to actually get into hospital.
In one part of the country patients now routinely spend 30 HOURS in the back of ambulances waiting to be transferred into A&E.
The scandal was exposed in an email sent to GP surgeries across Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board in South Wales this month that stated “significant acute site pressures” were leading to excessive waits for patients admitted into hospital.
Welsh Conservative Shadow Health Minister Russell George said: “Let there be no doubt of the scale of the crisis the NHS finds itself in.”
Commenting on the crisis in Wales, Jason Killens, chief executive of the Welsh Ambulance Service, admitted: “This week, there have been waits in excess of 30 hours for a patient to be transferred from the ambulance to the emergency department. The average wait is in the region of two hours — the target is 15 minutes.”
‘Breaking point’
Brenda Eynon, 85, had to wait more than a day for an ambulance after suffering a suspected stroke.
Her sister Suzanne Peters dialed 999 after Brenda lost movement in her right leg and arm.
Suzanne, of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, said: “I stayed with her all night but by the morning there was still no ambulance.”
In Scotland, the number of emergency callers waiting more than two hours for paramedics was 49,166 in 2021/22.
It was 4,438 in 2018/19.
Glasgow MSP Dr Sandesh Gulhane said that Scotland’s ambulance service is “at breaking point”. In Northern Ireland, the chief executive of the ambulance service reckons it could take five years for services to improve.
Michael Bloomfield said: “If our ambulances are waiting at emergency departments they are clearly not available to respond to other calls.”
A spokesman for Northern Ireland Ambulance Service said: “The Department of Health is addressing waiting times.”
Healthcare unions claim problems were largely hidden until Covid tested ambulance services to the limit with huge surges in demand.
Dr John Lister, of campaign group Health Emergency, said: “Patients face longer waits, both for calls to be answered and for paramedics to arrive. The situation has now reached crisis point.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The NHS has allocated £150million of additional system funding to address pressure on ambulance services and support improvements to response times.
“There is also an additional £50million of NHS funding to support increased NHS 111 calls taking capacity this year.”
A spokesman for NHS England said: “There were more life-threatening ambulance call-outs and 999 calls answered in April than the same month in all previous years.”