PARAMEDICS were forced to wait more than 11 hours to transfer a patient to the city’s hospital on three occasions in a month according to a report.

Other figures for September show almost two-thirds of crews had to wait more than the national target of 15 minutes outside Worcestershire Royal Hospital to hand over a patient with more than a quarter of trips taking longer than an hour.

The eye-watering wait outside Worcestershire Royal Hospital comes as pressure continues to mount on the NHS.

The longest wait for a crew outside the hospital in the month was seven hours and 24 minutes and the average handover time in September was just over 52 minutes according to a report due to be discussed by Worcestershire County Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee next Monday (October 18).

A spokesperson for West Midlands Ambulance Service said: “As an ambulance service, we now take less than half of our patients to hospital, the lowest in the country.

“Unfortunately, the whole of the NHS remains under severe pressure; hospital handover delays, unfortunately, mean patients waiting longer for an ambulance response.

“We are working with all local NHS partners to reduce delays so crews can respond to the next incident as quickly as possible.

“All patients continue to receive clinical care until they are handed over to hospital staff.”

Figures show the average response time to the most serious ‘life-threatening’ category one calls was nine minutes and 38 seconds.

Nine out of ten ‘category one’ patients were seen within 17 minutes and 54 seconds.

The same figures show the average response time for category two calls - which include emergencies such as strokes, heart attacks and major burns – was 32 minutes and 14 seconds.

Nine out of ten ‘category two’ patients were seen within one hour, four minutes and 40 seconds according to the NHS figures.

On average, the ambulance trust responded to urgent but not immediately life-threatening ‘category three’ calls in two hours, 17 minutes and 40 seconds.

Nine out of ten ‘category three’ patients were seen within five hours, 39 minutes and 25 seconds – way above the two-hour target – whilst 90 per cent of non-urgent but requiring assessment ‘category four’ calls were responded to within five hours and six minutes – much higher than the three-hour target.