The North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) has declared a second critical incident within nine days due to unprecedented pressure following the Christmas break.
The incident was declared on the morning of Tuesday December 27 as a result of significant delays for more than 100 patients waiting for an ambulance, together with a reduction in ambulance crew availability to respond because of delays in handing over patients at the region's hospitals.
NEAS has been operating at its highest level of alert status over the Christmas break already, keeping in place many of the actions from the previous declaration of a critical incident to cope over the extended bank holiday weekend covering Christmas and Boxing Day.
Shane Woodhouse, strategic commander today at North East Ambulance Service, said: "This is the second time in nine days that we have declared a critical incident due to the unprecedented pressure we are seeing across the health system. Declaring a critical incident alerts our health system partners to provide support where they can and means we can focus our resources on those patients most in need.
"The public should only call 999 in a life-threatening emergency. For all other patients, we are urging them to use www.111.nhs.uk, speak to their GP or pharmacist.
"We will be advising some patients to make their own way to hospital when it is safe to do so. We know patients will be experiencing longer waits for an ambulance – please only call back if your condition worsens or to cancel if it is no longer required.
"We are experiencing greater numbers of calls to 111 right now and ask that callers please consider 111 online first and don’t call 999 unless your condition is life threatening."
Patient transport service for appointments continues to operate solely for essential journeys such as dialysis, chemotherapy, oncology and heart care. The reduction in service will run until later this week to allow the service to redeploy the crews to support lower acuity emergency care patients as well as its hospitals with discharges.
Shane added: "Our staff and volunteers continue to work extremely hard to respond to calls and incidents. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work and commitment at this challenging time."
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