More than 38,000 people who called 999 in January 2022 with an emergency condition such as stroke waited nearly 90 minutes for an ambulance, NHS England figures reveal.
The new data shows that 10 per cent of category 2 incident calls to 999 took over 1 hour 23 minutes to arrive.
Patients waited an average of 38 minutes – more than twice the target response time.
Research shows that for 1.9 million brain cells die for each minute a stroke is left untreated.
Patients not treated in time face the an increased risk of death or severe disability.
Juliet Bouverie OBE, Chief Executive of the Stroke Association, said:
“Over the past few years, ambulance delays have slowly increased and the times taken for stroke patients to get appropriate treatments has crept up too.
“This has been an increasing danger for many years, but now we see an unprecedented leap in ambulance response times.
“I am worried that this severely threatens the lives and recoveries of stroke patients.
“Ambulance delays means delayed or missed chances for treatment, which cause avoidable disability and even death for some stroke patients.”
Ischemic strokes are by far the most common type of stroke, affecting around 87 per cent on patients.
However, ‘clot-busting’ drugs must be administered within four-and-a-half hours of stroke onset, getting less effective over time.
Meanwhile, the benefit of mechanical thrombectomy falls by 5.3 per cent for every hour of delay.
Bouverie added:
“We recognise and applaud the hard work of ambulance call handlers, paramedics and stroke clinicians.
“They’ve made great progress in reducing time to emergency treatment when a stroke patient arrives at hospital.
“But these gains are being squandered by systemic challenges that mean ambulances are not getting patients to hospital in the window that allows for life-saving and life-changing treatment.
“We’re also concerned that some patients are being advised to make their own way to hospital which is scary and often not appropriate.”
