North Shropshire MP tables motion on ambulance delays

The Lib Dem MP put forward the motion as seriously-injured patients continue to face huge waits for ambulances, with rural areas like North Shropshire facing the worst delays.

One 85-year-old woman with dementia was forced to wait 18 hours in agonising pain with a suspected broken hip before an ambulance arrived at her home in Helen’s constituency this week.

Despite hospital handover and ambulance response times being dangerously long for more than a year, the Government is still yet to take any serious action to address the crisis.

Helen has now filed a motion in Parliament which calls on the Government to tackle staff shortages across health and care as well as other factors contributing to ambulance delays.

North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan said: “I’m beginning to sound like a broken record for repeatedly bringing up the ambulance crisis but that’s because we have a broken government. Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid need to wake up, act and stop letting people die.

“Response times in Shropshire were already dangerously high at the beginning of last year and they have only got worse thanks to this Government’s lack of action.

“Earlier this week I was contacted by a constituent whose 85-year-old mother was forced to wait in pain for 18 hours before an ambulance arrived to treat her suspected broken hip.

“The family have nothing but praise for the kind, caring and hard-working paramedics who eventually arrived but they are understandably angry that the health situation has been allowed to get this bad. Unfortunately her case is no longer unusual, in fact it is very common. What will it take for the Government to act?

“There are staffing shortages across every area of the health service. Hospitals and care homes in Shropshire need extra support to recruit and retain personnel. It’s no wonder that staff turnover rates are high when they are forced to work under such extreme pressure.”

The motion also asks the Government to force ambulance service providers to report response times by postcode so that resources can be more effectively target to areas like North Shropshire where injured patients are forced to wait the longest for an ambulance.

And it repeats Helen’s call for the Government to commission the CQC to conduct an independent investigation into the ambulance crisis.

Handover delays outside hospitals are still getting worse each month and some of the worst delays are outside Shrewsbury and Telford hospitals where paramedics are stranded for hundreds of hours every week. Around 10% of all roles at the hospital trust are vacant and it is being forced to spend around £3 million each month on agency staff.

Helen added: “Not only are patients forced to wait up to a day for an ambulance to arrive, once they get to hospital they then might be stuck outside for the same amount of time. Meanwhile critically injured people are dying waiting for paramedics to arrive.

“I really appreciate the hard work local NHS staff are doing to improve the situation but this needs Government action. A CQC investigation would be really beneficial as it would be fully independent and could help find new solutions to this crisis.”