Ambulances waiting at an A&E department
(Picture: PA Wire)London patients must not "normalise" the "outrage" of 12-hour waits for treatment in A&E, a charity has warned.
John Maingay, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said "systemic changes" were needed to NHS emergency care as figures revealed that nearly 10,000 Londoners waited over 12 hours to be admitted to A&E in December.
A total of 9,588 people had to wait more than 12 hours in A&E departments in London in December from a decision to admit to actually being admitted – a jump of 34 per cent on the previous month.
Reacting to the figures, Mr Maingay told the Standard: "It's really important that we don’t start accepting these figures as the new normal.
"It would have been unimaginable a few years ago that people were not able to get to hospital with a heart attack. Now we are seeing it happening.
"We have to retain a sense of outrage that this is unacceptable in our modern NHS. And there has to be bold, concerted and possibly expensive action to fix it."
Ambulance delays for life-threatening calls also reached a new record high in December, with the average response time for a Category 1 call rising to almost 11 minutes.
Mr Maingay said that the "knock on effects of these delays for the nation’s heart health were clear", adding: "All of the metrics are already going in the wrong direction."
"This isn’t a theoretical risk – we are seeing more cases of people dying due to ambulance waits. There is a real urgency about fixing this but unfortunately no simple solutions."
In other developments, NHS figures showed the number of flu patients in hospital in England fell for the first time this winter, in a sign the current wave of infections may have peaked.
An average of 5,262 flu patients were in hospital beds each day last week, down 3 per cent from 5,441 the previous week, according to data from NHS England.
The number of Londoners waiting more than 4 hours to be admitted to A&E was also up by 14.8 per cent on the previous month, the figures showed.
It comes just a day after paramedics and 999 call handlers staged a second day of industrial action, with UNISON members in London walking out for 12 hours from 11am yesterday.
Siva Anandaciva, Chief Analyst at The King’s Fund, said: “There is no shying away from the reality that the NHS is deep in crisis, as demonstrated by unprecedented strikes and widespread, serious and sustained problems in quality of care, despite the best efforts of health care staff.
“The figures show this is particularly true in emergency care, with patients waiting over an hour and a half on average for an ambulance when they have a condition like a stroke or heart attack, and even when they get to hospital nearly 55,000 people are stuck in A&E on trolleys waiting more than 12 hours. Since modern records began, A&E performance is the worst it has ever been and not a single NHS trust in the country is managing to meet the national target to be seen within four.”
