A North West paramedic is urging people not to call 999 for unnecessary reasons as the emergency service faces huge pressures amid high temperatures. The NHS issued a national warning ahead of the heatwave asking hospitals to take ‘immediate steps’ to reduce ambulance waiting times outside A&E departments to under 30 minutes, amid warnings of ‘high risk to patients’ during the hot weather.
Response times to 999 callers and handover times when patients are delivered to hospital via ambulance have been hit by demand over the last year. But North West Ambulance Service ( NWAS ) admitted last week that response times would get worse as the weather warmed, patients with less urgent complaints would likely be waiting much longer.
Likewise, A&Es across Greater Manchester have too warned that they were already full before the mercury climbed - the Royal Bolton Hospital, for example, warning of waiting times of more than four hours. That means that when patients get brought in via ambulance, demand on doctors and for inpatient beds is already outstripping capacity.
