Responding to Lord Ara Darzi’s independent review of the NHS in England, Anna Parry, Managing Director of AACE said:
“ There is a palpable sense of relief within the ambulance sector that somebody with the breadth of experience and knowledge of Lord Darzi has been given the opportunity to review the current state of the NHS, and that he has provided such a clear indication of the scale of the challenges that lie ahead for each part of the health and social care system so that we can get our health service consistently and sustainably back on track.
The report recognises the unacceptable delays that patients can face in accessing emergency care, which as AACE has consistently pointed out is particularly exacerbated by hospital handover delays at emergency departments. As Lord Darzi’s review points out, in 2024, around 800 working days, each day, have been lost to these delays which are only counted when they exceed 30 minutes. In aggregate, it is the full-time equivalent of nearly 1,400 paramedics over the course of a year.
These delays have an enormous impact on patients waiting in ambulances but also out in the community awaiting a 999 response, in terms of the quality of care they receive, their experiences of the NHS and their clinical outcomes. Sadly, we know that tens of thousands of patients have been coming to avoidable harm – and worse – for several years now, and our firm hope is that Lord Darzi’s review reinvigorates the whole system to redouble its efforts to put an end to this unsustainable situation, which has a detrimental effect upon ambulance employees as well as patients.
Lord Darzi has rightly outlined a long-term approach to improving the NHS – by way of the ten-year plan – which we believe is sensible and appropriate. However, we would still urge the Government to be bold and ambitious in its strategy for fixing the NHS, with a firm focus on the development of technology that will genuinely improve community-based care for patients before they get to the point where they need an ambulance, reducing avoidable conveyance to hospitals and ultimately improving their outcomes and experiences. ”
