East Midlands Ambulance Service crews spent 3,500 fewer hours waiting at hospitals in February after year-on-year handover delays significantly declined.
East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) crews spent 3,500 fewer hours waiting at hospitals in February after year-on-year handover delays significantly declined.
Alongside hospitals, it dealt with increased demand over winter due to seasonal pressures from flu, norovirus and other surges in hospitals.
It lost 25,432 hours to patient hospital handovers lasting more than 15 minutes in December 2024 and lost 22,300 hours in January 2025.
The delays occur when ambulance crews are left waiting to pass patients over to the care of busy hospitals once they arrived from a call, meaning fewer free ambulances are available.
The February figure shows a continued improvement on lost hours for the service, with EMAS losing 15,484 hours in February- this is 3,598 fewer than February 2024.
The service’s board met last week to discuss its operational performance.
Ben Holdaway, EMAS Director of Operations, said: “Within that reduction there was a 25 per cent reduction in our duplicate calls which is a strong case to say people aren’t ringing back and looking where we are.
“Taking the duplicate calls out, what we saw was a three per cent increase in actual 999 calls, so there’s a positive in there that we are getting to patients quicker.”
A 45-minute ambulance handover scheme being rolled out across the region has played a part in the service’s improved figures.
This involves patients being handed over to A&E nurses by ambulance staff within 45 minutes, where clinically acceptable.
Keeley Sheldon, director of quality, told the board there had been 253 breaches in minimum care standards in patients’ transitions from the ambulance to the hospital in February- there were 425 reported in January.
She said this decrease was “absolutely that direct baring of the implementation of the 45-minute handover [scheme]- the reduce in lost hours is obviously reducing those breaches“.
