New Cross Hospital fined £300k for leaving people waiting in ambulances too long

The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust has been ordered to pay a total of £308,800 in the last nine months for leaving people waiting in ambulances too long – some for longer than an hour at a time.

Hospital trust chiefs say it is down to ‘unprecedented’ times as the number of ambulances arriving at A&E hit record highs with 11,650 ambulance conveyances in just three months between January to March this year.

• MORE: Fall in complaints about New Cross Hospital

• MORE: Number of cancelled operations at New Cross at all-time low

National guidelines state patients should be handed over in under 15 minutes.

The handover period is defined as ‘the duration from the time the vehicle arrived at hospital to the time in which the patient was handed over to hospital staff.’

Last month, the trust was fined £15,800 for leaving 69 patients waiting between 30 and 60 minutes at a cost of £200 per patient and two patients waiting for more than an hour at a cost of £1,000 per patient.

The most the trust has been fined in one month since October 2016 was in January this year, where the fine was a staggering £85,200.

Figures from the West Midlands Ambulance Trust show that the longest recorded handover time from January to March 2017 was one hour and 57 minutes. In the same period 120 patients waited more than an hour to be handed over.

In April this year, the Trust was fined £7,600. In March, the fine was £24,200, in February it was £66,200 and January saw the £85,200 fine.

Last year, from October to December the total fine was £109,800. October 2016 saw a fine of £61,800, in November the fine was £10,000 whilst in December it was £38,000.

The highest number of patients waiting to be transferred was in January this year, when 221 patients waited between 30 and 60 minutes and 41 patients waiting longer than an hour. But most people waited up to 15 minutes to be transferred to hospital.

A spokesperson for The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust said: “These are unprecedented times for the NHS and the challenges facing our staff increase on a daily basis. We are seeing record numbers of ambulances. We always strive to provide the best, high quality, safe care we can for every one of our patients and we have a good working relationship with the West Midlands Ambulance Service which helps us provide the care our patients deserve when they arrive here. We will work with partners to do all we can to improve our handover times. As in previous years we will apply to the CCG to recover monies and ensure the money supports our front-line services.”