“Heartbreaking” A&E wait times with one in ten patients waiting more than four hours.

"Heartbreaking" A&E wait times with one in ten patients waiting more than four hours.

Guildford's Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate Zöe Franklin shares the latest A&E and Ambulance figures.

The A&E department at the Royal Surrey Hospital saw just over 7,000 patients in December.

• 705 patients waited more than 4 hours from the decision to admit them to hospital to actually being admitted.
• 41 waited more than 12 hours from admission decision to being admitted.

The Ambulance service is struggling with the crisis too.

• The average ambulance response time for the most urgent "Category 1" incidents was 11 minutes. The NHS target is 7 minutes.
• Average ambulance response times for "Category 2" emergencies like heart attacks and strokes, are now more than 46 minutes - two and a half times longer than the 18 minute target.

Zöe Franklin, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Guildford:

" The Conservative Government must act. Their failure to tackle the crisis in our NHS is badly letting us down and putting patients' lives at risk. How much more evidence do Ministers need? They either don't care or just can't grasp the scale of this problem.

"I want to thank all the staff at the Royal Surrey and in our ambulance service for working so hard and for doing everything they can. But the Government MUST act and tackle this crisis. The Government is failing to meet the targets it set. And precious minutes lost can cost lives.

"We deserve better."

The Liberal Democrats have set out a five-point plan (below) to tackle the ambulance service crisis.

Further information:

Ambulance Crisis - 5 Point Winter Plan

• Launch a campaign to retain, recruit and train paramedics and other ambulance service staff.
• Bring forward a fully funded programme to get people who are medically well enough discharged from hospital and set up with appropriate social care and support.
• In addition to getting people out of hospital so that they get care in a more comfortable setting, the number of beds in hospitals needs to be increased to end excessive handover delays for ambulances, caused by a lack of bed capacity.
• Expand mental health support services to get people the appropriate care they need and reduce the number of call outs for ambulances for mental health reasons.
• Pass Daisy Cooper MP's Ambulance Waiting Times Bill into law that would require accessible, localised reports of ambulance response times to be published. This would ensure that 'hot spots' with some of the longest waiting times can be identified routinely. 12-hour waits at A&E should also be published from arrival at hospital rather than the 'decision to admit' as is current practice, so that the true scale of the problem is clear for all to see.

Ambulance Categories and Targets

These figures refer to Category 1 incidents: An immediate response to a life-threatening condition, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest. The NHS target is an average response time to these incidents of 7 minutes, and 90% of them are to be responded to within 15 minutes. Source.

A&E Targets

Four-hour A&E waiting time target is a pledge set out in the Handbook to the NHS Constitution. The operational standard is that at least 95% of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. Source.