Shropshire hospital ambulance delays longest in the country - MP presses government to prioritise emergency care

The data, which tracks the time it takes ambulance crews to hand patients over to hospital, shows that for December 29 ambulances waited for an average of three hours and 48 minutes at Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) - which has A&E departments at both Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital in Telford.

Only four other trusts in the country had average handovers of longer than three hours.

North Shropshire's Liberal Democrat MP, Helen Morgan, has said that the government risks prioritising 'hip replacements over heart attacks' by focussing efforts to cut waiting times for elective operations, rather than emergency care.

The warning comes after a weekend where the pressure on SaTH saw a 'critical incident' declared, with visiting cancelled and people asked to wear facemasks again.

The three hour 48 minute average wait for ambulances was longer than any other hospital trust in England. The figures also show that 50 ambulances out of a total of 89 ambulances had to wait more than an hour.

The national average was 54 minutes.

The situation is one which has repeatedly materialised in Shropshire over recent winters, with the hospitals also struggling because they are unable to discharge healthy patients to community care - meaning beds remain unnecessarily blocked by medically health patients.

On December 29, 121 hospital beds at SaTH were blocked by patients who were medically fit for discharge - 37 of these had been in hospital for more than three weeks.

Mrs Morgan has been campaigning on the issue since her election three years ago and highlighted the ongoing problems as she led a debate on NHS backlogs in Parliament.

The MP welcomed the Government’s efforts to cut waiting times for elective care but warned that this must not come at the expense of tackling the emergency care crisis which has led to overcrowded A&Es and queues of ambulances outside hospital.

She also called for faster action on social care, which would help free up space in hospital by moving patients from beds on wards into the community.

Since the end of November, ambulances at SaTH have been waiting an average of two hours to discharge patients.

The pressure on the A&E departments has saw only half of patients seen within four hours in November.

Speaking in the House of Commons Mrs Morgan said: "The situation in Shropshire right now demonstrates the scale of the crisis. The pressure is extreme on every aspect of healthcare and reflects the fact that in many cases rural areas are bearing the brunt of a national problem.

“The Conservatives’ legacy on the NHS is that it is on its knees. The Liberal Democrats understand that there is no magic quick fix to change that, but to give people the care they need and deserve we must look at the measures needed for the whole service, giving equal priority to both heart attacks and hip replacements.”

Mrs Morgan also questioned Health Secretary Wes Streeting after the Government announced plans to cut waiting times by upgrading the NHS app and opening new diagnostic centres and surgical hubs.

She urged the Government to ensure that elderly patients without access to the app are given the same choice and control over treatment as those able to utilise the technology.