Ambulance waiting times are back on the rise for stroke patients, data shows.
Currently, a stroke falls under category two of ambulance call outs, along with other serious conditions such as heart attacks.
The national standard that is set out to all ambulance trusts states that they must respond to category two calls, in 18 minutes on average, furthermore, responding to 90 per cent of this call category within 40 minutes.
The new ambulance standards set by NHS England states that: “Stroke patients will get to hospital or a specialist stroke unit quicker because we can send the most appropriate vehicle first time.”
However, this has not been the case.
According to NHS England, Ambulance Quality Indicators, the average response times for category two calls have continued to worsen since May 2020.
The average waiting times peaked in March 2022, with the average response time standing at 1hr, 1 min and 3 seconds. The 90th centile response time was 2hrs 17 minutes.
Both of these times are 3.4 times longer than their targets.
Latest figures from June 2022 show an average time of 51 minutes 38 seconds and the 90th centile was 1 hr 54 mins and 17 seconds.
The mean average time from 999 call to arrival at hospital for stroke patients was 1 hour 44 minutes in February 2022.
This is followed up by the average time from hospital to CT scan standing at 1 hour and 25 minutes.
However, the average mean time of hospital arrival to thrombolysis was 56 minutes, which is as low as it the waiting time was in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Juliet Bouverie, CEO of the Stroke Association, highlights the problem of increased waiting times: “For every minute that a stroke goes untreated, there are 1.9 million neurons in the brain that just die. So every minute matters,
“there is a problem with ambulance response times we know that the average response time for a stroke call which is called a category 2, ambulance response is 18 minutes and yet we’re seeing those numbers, trebling, even getting up to an hour.”
Austin Willett, CEO of Different Strokes also backs the message of time being of the essence saying: “Time is of crucial importance in minimising the effects of stroke. Whether due to a bleed or a blockage, investigating the cause as soon as possible reduces the risk of severe disability or, in the worst-case, death.
“Stroke occurs every five minutes in the UK and is already one of the leading causes of death and disability, but unless this dangerous increase in average waiting times for category two callouts is urgently addressed, we are likely to see worse outcomes for people that have a stroke.
“We understand that the NHS is under immense pressure and people on the frontline are doing all they can in difficult circumstances.
“We call on decision makers to provide more resource and support to ensure these vital services are able to provide the lifesaving care that is so urgently required.
“It’s a frightening prospect for us all that we could be left waiting for an ambulance in our time of greatest need.”
Earlier this year, Deborah Lee, CEO of Gloucestershire Hospitals Foundation Trust, took to Twitter after she’d suffered from a suspected stoke.
She describes as taking a “turn – lop sided and unable to speak.” Her husband then drove her to A&E.
“From start to finish, the NHS served me with pace, expertise and kindness. Today I’m sat in a cafe (having travelled by bus) reflecting on events. Naturally,
“I am eternally grateful to my husband for his swift actions, to all the NHS staff that I came across, to those who invented clot busting drugs but I can’t get one thing out of my head. What if my husband hadn’t been there and my daughter had called for an ambulance and I’d been put in the Cat 2 “stack” ?
“Through no fault of its own, the SW has the worst ambulances handover delays of any region; my system is working unrelentingly to solve this but to no great avail. The problem isn’t the front door of hospitals, it’s the back. It’s a complete lack of flow, with no silver bullet.”
Clearly much more needs to be done by decision-makers to achieve quicker callout times and stop their current incline. This is no mean feat amid an overstretched UK public health service still struggling with post-pandemic backlogs.
