The figures were revealed to The Voice days after the Care Quality Commission returned to East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) for a three-day inspection, having issued the trust with a warning notice and rated it ‘requires improvement’ last year.
Failure to meet national response targets due to insufficient staff and the impact of hospital handover delays on resourcing were two key concerns when the warning notice was issued.
EMAS says improvements are being made, but the rural nature of south Lincolnshire will always make national targets challenging here.
Blanche Lentz, paramedic and general manager for Lincolnshire, said: “Our commissioners fund us to meet national set targets for the whole region and recognise this can be difficult in rural areas.
“We continue to face challenges mainly due to an increase in demand across the NHS. We are managing more patients than ever before and hospitals are also seeing similar pressures which have a knock on effect on our service.
“When hospitals are busy we can experience delays in them accepting our patients. When our crews are kept waiting at hospital for prolonged periods of time they aren’t able to get to patients who have called for help and are waiting in the community.
“There is a direct correlation between delays at hospital and our performance.
“The hospitals in our region recognise the pressure this puts on our service and we continue to work together to make improvements.”
At Boston’s Pilgrim Hospital last month there were 157 cases where crews waited one to two hours to handover and eight cases of two to four hour delays. At Peterborough there were 39 cases of one-two hours and 11 cases of two to four hour delays, EMAS said.
An independent review of ambulance service demand is ongoing and some increased investment has already been agreed by commissioners.
