The worst NHS ambulance delays have been revealed as critical patients were forced to wait 10 hours and others more than two days for care

EMERGENCY patients were forced to wait more than 10 hours for ambulances in the worst delays last year, NHS figures reveal.

The longest waits for category 2 calls, including heart attacks and strokes, will exceed 10 hours in all areas of England in 2023.

The worst was a shocking 16 hours and 49 minutes in East Anglia.

In previous years, patients died after similar delays.

NHS standards stipulate that a crew must arrive within 18 minutes for Category 2 calls.

Almost all ambulance trusts also left Category 1 patients in a life-or-death situation waiting for more than an hour – well above the seven-minute target.

Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said: “It’s scary to think that if you’ve had a stroke or heart attack, an ambulance might not get to you in time, if at all.”

A freedom of information investigation found that less urgent category 3 and 4 calls languished for more than two days in some areas.

Seven of England’s 10 regional ambulance services provided data.

The worst delayed Category 3 call, in the West Midlands, lasted a staggering 57 hours, 39 minutes and 25 seconds.

Category 3 is classified as urgent but not emergency and can include injuries, burns or complications from diabetes.

BUSY HOSPITALS TO BLAME

Ambulance services in England have not met Category 2 targets – the most common calls – in normal times since current records began in 2017, only doing so during the first Covid lockdown.

Busy hospitals mean transferring patients takes longer than it should while staff try to find a bed, preventing crews from getting back on the road.

It comes as NHS bosses say they will be “picking up the pieces” for weeks after the latest junior doctors’ strike ends on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of appointments and operations are expected to have been canceled during the five days of protest.

Matthew Taylor, of the NHS Confederation, said: “It is questionable that these strikes in the middle of a general election campaign could have turned the tide.

“It is the patients who bear the brunt of this dispute.”

Anna Parry, from the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, said: “NHS urgent and emergency care is under constant pressure.

“High demand across the 999 system and extreme challenges caused by delivery delays to emergency departments are two of the main reasons why ambulance services do not always meet their response time target.

“Our data suggests that response times will remain significantly impacted until delays in the transfer of health and social care are eradicated.”

A spokesperson for the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, which is responsible for the 16-hour delay, said: “We are very sorry for the delay in responding to this call in 2023.

“We investigated and discovered that the delay was due to a technical error in our computer-aided dispatch system.

“The patient was treated by a team and was later discharged at the scene after a joint decision was made with the Urgent Community Response Team.”

A spokesperson for West Midlands Ambulance Service said: “We would like to apologize to the patient for taking so long to respond.

“There is a direct correlation between response times and delays in hospital transfers.

“Unfortunately, delays mean some patients wait much longer than we would like.”