By Lucy Ashton
Dumbarton MSP Dame Jackie Baillie has hit out over continuing chaos in the healthcare system, as the crisis facing the NHS deepens.
It comes after a local resident told how she faced a “horrendous”, almost 16 hour wait, for an ambulance to convey her to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
A GP called in an ambulance crew to take the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, to the hospital’s Immediate Assessment Unit (IAU), shortly before 6pm on January 23rd.
But the ambulance – supposed to arrive within four hours – did not show up until 8.32am the following morning.
Scottish Ambulance Service bosses have attributed the delay to “significant pressure” on the healthcare system across the Greater Glasgow and Clyde areas.
They also told how delays in their crews being able to hand over patients at the QEUH and other hospitals in the area had a significant impact on their service.
Dame Jackie Baillie — “The woman’s GP was told in the initial call that the service could not supply an ambulance within a requested four hour non-emergency timescale.”
Ambulance bosses say the average handover delay of 1hr 32 mins at the QEUH, a hospital to which they transported 138 patients on January 23rd, created significant difficulties for them.
They acknowledged that the service had been heavily impacted for two days.
The woman’s GP was told in the initial call that the service could not supply an ambulance within a requested four hour non-emergency timescale “due to sustained levels of high emergency demand and significant ambulance hand over times at QEUH”.
But members of the family were dismayed when a crew finally attended at 8.32am the following morning.
Dame Jackie, Scottish Labour’s spokesperson for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care, said: “The difficulties facing hard-working ambulance crews due to delays in handover at hospitals has been well-documented.
“Despite pledges from both health board bosses and the Scottish Government to eradicate handover delays and help relieve pressure on ambulances, we are now facing another winter of continuing delays and failed rhetoric.
“Our crucial public service workers are doing their best to shore up services but the SNP’s commitment to helping the NHS recover from Covid has gone the same way as the rest of their broken promises.
“It is vital that people who need an ambulance get one when it is required and we need action now to support staff and help patients.”