Nearly 70,000 ambulance hours lost to patient handover delays at Wrexham Maelor Hospital in three years

Nearly 70,000 ambulance hours have been lost due to patient handover delays at Wrexham Maelor Hospital in the last three years.

New figures obtained by Wrexham.com show 2023 was the worst year for this with 32,474 hours lost due to ambulances queuing outside the hospital.

This was compared to 22,548 hours in 2022 and 14,075 in 2021, according to information shared following an FOI request to the Welsh Ambulance Service.

The average wait for patients to be handed over to the hospital from ambulances was two hours and 32 minutes last year, compared to just over two hours in 2022 and one hour and nine minutes in 2021.

Handover delays usually occur when ambulances turn up at emergency departments but can’t hand patients over to hospital staff due to units being busy.

This then has a knock on effect where ambulance crews are unable to get back on the road to respond to other emergencies in the community.

Comparative figures for other hospitals and health boards in Wales can be seen below:

Handover delays have previously been cited as one of the reasons why the Welsh Ambulance Service has repeatedly failed to meet the target of responding to 65 per cent of the most serious “red” calls within eight minutes since July 2020.

They have also been highlighted in a number of prevention of future death reports issued by coroners in North Wales in recent years.

In May, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s chief executive Jason Killens admitted such delays were leading to “avoidable harm” being caused to patients.

Speaking to the Senedd’s health committee, he said: “The reason that we have response delays in our communities is not because we don’t have enough ambulances, it’s because our ambulances aren’t available to us.

“It’s something like one in 10 patients is subject to some level of moderate or severe harm or death associated with a response or handover delay.”

The service has separately warned that its ability to respond to major incidents such as terrorist attacks could be severely hampered by handover delays.

It follows a report being published that highlights the risk of “catastrophic harm” to members of the public if crews are tied up outside emergency departments during serious incidents.

In Wales, the target is for all patient handovers to occur from within 15 minutes of crews notifying emergency departments of their arrival.

Every minute over and above the 15 minute allowance is considered to be “lost” by the Welsh Ambulance Service.

The service has previously emphasised its focus on easing pressure on hospitals by treating more patients at home.

However, it has questioned the effectiveness of procedures designed to release ambulances from outside hospitals to attend serious calls after the organisation wrote to health boards across Wales to seek assurances earlier this year.

We also asked the ambulance service for figures showing how many times immediate vehicle releases have been requested from outside A&E departments versus how many were actually approved.

The data shows 6,118 requests were made for ambulances to be released from outside the Maelor to attend emergencies during the three year period, but less than half of these (2,898) were accepted.

Comparative figures for other hospitals and health boards can also be seen below:

(Top image: Archive image from outside our hospital)