Ambulance waits at Worcester hospital for nearly 14 hours

The ambulance service said one vehicle had to wait with a patient for nearly 14 hours outside the hospital

An ambulance had to wait with a patient for nearly 14 hours outside Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

West Midlands Ambulance Service said staff stayed with a patient there for that amount of time on Monday.

Some ambulances also had to be diverted to the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, which is also part of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

In total, the ambulance service said it had lost more than 260 hours with crews having to wait outside the hospitals.

It has previously highlighted the amount of time its vehicles were being forced to wait outside hospitals in the region, because of delays in getting patients admitted.

'Serious challenges'

In September last year, 622 ambulances waited more than an hour to discharge their patients at Worcestershire Royal.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said the pandemic was continuing to create "very serious challenges" which its teams were "working incredibly hard to deal with".

"At the same time, we are caring for unprecedented numbers of patients in need of our urgent and emergency care services, which includes patients making their own way into our emergency department as well as those being brought in by ambulance," chief executive Matthew Hopkins said.

"Despite our best efforts, we are sometimes seeing ambulances waiting outside our hospitals for longer than we would like."

He added the trust was working closely with the ambulance service and other partners to explore options to reduce waiting times and improve handovers.