There were 1,911 people suffering from conditions like suspected strokes or heart attacks who waited more than three and a half hours of an ambulance in December in the North East, NHS figures show.
The average response time for category 2 ambulance calls - including those which could be strokes or heart attacks - was one hour, 36 minutes and 23 seconds. But 10% were waiting longer than three hours, 39 minutes for an ambulance to arrive from North East Ambulance Service.
Remarkably, this is still marginally above the average for ambulance calls of this type around England - which sees 10% waiting longer than three hours, 41 minutes. The target is that the average should be 18 minutes, with 90% of incidents responded to within 40 minutes.
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When it comes to the most serious calls, according to the NHS data for December, the average NEAS response time was eight minutes, 51 seconds. That's outside of the seven minute target time - but the quickest figure in England.
NEAS was forced to declare critical incidents over the festive period this year, while Monkseaton pensioner John Derry, 84, waited four hours for an ambulance on December 29. Mr Derry, who has a heart condition, had blacked out earlier that day and feared for his life.
At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer cited the case of Stephanie, a 26 year-old cancer patient from Plymouth who died while waiting for an ambulance only 2.3 miles from a hospital on the January 4. He asked the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to put himself in the position of a heart attack patient.
Sir Keir said: "By 1pm our heart attack victim is in a bad way, sweaty, dizzy, chest tightening … by that time they should be getting treatment, but an hour after they’ve called 999 they’re still lying there, waiting, listening to the clock tick. How does he think they feel knowing an ambulance could be still hours away?"
Rishi Sunak insisted the Government was taking “very practical steps that will make a difference in short term”. He replied: "The specific and practical things we are doing to improve ambulance times are clear. We are investing more in urgent and emergency care to create more bed capacity, we are ensuring that the flow of patients through emergency care is faster than it ever has been.
"We are discharging people at a record rate out of hospitals to ease the constraints that they are facing and we are reducing the callout rates by moving people out of ambulance stacks and being dealt with in the community. Now, these are all very practical steps that will make a difference in short term."
Chief operating officer at North East Ambulance Service, Stephen Segasby said, “Pressures across the healthcare system and the impact on ambulance services have been well documented over recent months. We continue to work with our partners to address this and improve response times so that we can provide the level of care we expect for our patients.”
This comes as ambulance service personnel around the country continue to take part in industrial action and highlight the impact of declining pay and a staff exodus on patient care. Last week paramedic Jayne Elliott told ChronicleLive: "We have always been not really paid for the job that we do, but recently patient care has suffered because the pay means we're not retaining staff.
"And lack of investment in the NHS, across all of it - nurses, doctors and what not - is obviously backlogging the hospitals now so now we are queuing for hours on end."
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