Heart attack patients to be told to expect 'several hour' wait for ambulance when service is busiest
Suspected heart attack and stroke patients will be told it could be "several hours" before an ambulance arrives under new advice for when the service is under pressure.
West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) staff were briefed on the changes earlier this week.
It means that when the service is at its busiest – what are called 'surge three and four' statuses' – call handlers will be told to tell callers with suspected heart attacks and strokes that it "may take several hours" before an ambulance is available.
Ambulance trusts are told to aim to reach category two patients, such as those with strokes or heart attacks, in an average time of 18 minutes.
The development, revealed by Sunday Times health reporter Shaun Lintern on Twitter and confirmed by the trust to the Shropshire Star, is the latest of the problems facing a service under increasing pressure.
Senior ambulance officials have repeatedly voiced concern over the state of the service in recent months, saying that patients have been coming to harm, and even dying, due to delays.
One of the major issues has been delays in handing patients over to hospitals – with crews waiting for more than 10 hours in hospital car parks on repeated occasions.
Ambulances across the region spent around 2,300 hours waiting outside hospitals on Monday.
The document sent to staff includes a new script for call handlers to follow outlining the potential delays.
The paper said: "Due to the unprecedented demand on the trust, which is resulting in long delays reaching patients, we must adopt the following call closure script for all category two calls during surge 3 & 4 until further notice."
The script states: "The ambulance service is currently under significant pressure. You/ the patient do need an emergency response but we don't currently have an ambulance available to respond and it may take several hours before one is available.
"As soon as we have an ambulance available help will be arranged."
The briefing note also recognises call handlers may be faced with "difficult conversations" as a result and the trust said it would offer support to those affected.
A WMAS spokesman said they were working "incredibly hard" to find ways to improve response times.
He said: “The ambulance service relies on each part of the health and social care system working together so that our ambulances can get to patients in the community quickly.
"Sadly the pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital rather than responding to the next call.
"The result is that our crews are delayed reaching patients.
"We are working incredibly hard with all of our NHS and social care partners to prevent these delays, looking at new ways to safely hand over patients quickly so that our crews can respond more rapidly and save more lives.”
