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Health boss: Target times 'challenging'

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date05 April 2024
Publication titleEvening Chronicle
Ambulance handover delays occur when there are not enough beds in a hospital to transfer a patient to, which can result in long waits in a queue of vehicles at hospitals. NHS England's long-term plan for the health service has set out a vision to eliminate delays due to the risk posed in postponing key assessment and treatment for those left waiting

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust aimed to complete 65% of handovers within 15 minutes and 95% within 30 minutes. However, the trust's latest quality accounts showed that just 26.7% of handovers were done within 15 minutes, while 64.7% were done within half an hour.

The data covered the first three quarters of 2023. A report presented to members of Northumberland County Council's health and wellbeing scrutiny committee on Tuesday pointed out that December 2023 was a "particularly difficult" month for the trust.

Director of patient safety Rachel Carter said the situation was unlikely to change. She said: "We haven't achieved what we set out to do over that time.

Part of that has been very much about increased attendances and patients needing admission relating to a backlog of flow throughout the system.

"We have found this extremely challenging but nevertheless there is some extremely good work going on...

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