A and E and Ambulance Services

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I commend the care at Worthing hospital. As he will know, I try to go out on the NHS front line and take part in a shift most weeks, and the very first hospital I went to was Worthing hospital, where I thought the care was excellent. He is right that it is about close working; people in care homes who end up going to A and Es when they could have been better looked after at their care home is probably top of the list of admissions to hospital that we could avoid, because we know the vast majority of those people will end up being admitted to hospital if they arrive at an A and E. That is often not the best thing for people with late-stage dementia, for example, so my hon. Friend is absolutely right and I want to reassure him that that is a big focus of our efforts this winter.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Mrs J, an elderly constituent of mine, waited two hours following a fall for an ambulance that should have reached her in 30 minutes. The Secretary of State will be aware that there have been similar cases, not least the one described to the Deputy Prime Minister by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) at Prime Minister’s questions last week. Two calls were made to the North West ambulance service in respect of Mrs J, and one was received from NWAS one and a half hours after the first report, explaining there would be a delay in getting an ambulance to her because of pressures in the system. While it is welcome that the family and carers were kept informed about what was going on, is it not a symptom of terrible pressures in the system that routine operating procedures now have to include call-backs to explain delays?

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady is right, and there is particular pressure in the ambulance service across the country. We are putting in £50 million of winter-pressures money to help address those issues. Where there are unavoidable delays because of other emergencies at the same time, it is important to get the communication right, and I do not think we do that as well as we should. There are times when we could give more specific information about the likely arrival times of ambulances, according to the algorithms used by 999 and 111 call-handlers. That would keep the public better informed. That is something we are looking at.