Ambulance service has said it is “working tirelessly” to reduce delays

The region’s ambulance service has said it is “working tirelessly” to reduce delays after a trust boss admitted it is on the brink of collapse.

West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) director Mark Docherty issued the startling warning that the crisis-hit service will ‘sink like the Titanic’ in August because of lengthy and ever-increasing delays.

The service said ambulances and hospitals remain under “severe pressure” and handover delays were meaning patients were waiting longer than they should.

Serious concerns were raised by Mr Docherty, WMAS’s director of nursing, who expects the service will “collapse” on August 17 when a third of that day’s resources will be lost to delays.

Asked what the service would be doing ahead of the grim deadline in mid-August, WMAS said the NHS remained under severe pressure despite the hard work of the ambulance service, paramedics and hospitals.

“The whole of the NHS remains under severe pressure and unfortunately – despite the hard work and innovation taking place in our service and in hospitals to improve patient care and discharge patients who are ready, including to social care settings – handover delays mean some patients are waiting longer for an ambulance than we would want,” a spokesperson said.

“Our staff and volunteers work tirelessly to respond as soon as possible and we continue to work with local partners to find ways to reduce the delays so that our crews can respond more quickly.”

Mr Docherty told the ambulance service’s board of directors at a meeting on Wednesday (May 25) that patients suffering from heart attacks, strokes and blood clots were “dying every day” due to ambulances being stuck outside hospitals for several hours

In an interview with the Health Service Journal (HSJ) earlier this week, Mr Docherty said ever-rising numbers of patients were waiting in the back of ambulances for 24 hours or more before being admitted to hospital, and that serious incidents have quadrupled in the past year.

He said patients were “dying every day” from avoidable causes created by ambulance delays and he could not understand why NHS England and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) were not taking the crisis more seriously.

West Midlands Ambulance Service raised its risk rating for handover delays to 25 in October, the highest in its history.