Valerie Hill (2)

“The volumes of people waiting excessive periods for transfer from ambulance vehicles to the care of staff in Emergency Departments, in particular, has reached intolerable levels....I am concerned about the level of tolerance to such delays a require you to take greater ownership of this issue as a priority....the current situation cannot continue”

“Despite some relaxation in the guidelines set by the Welsh Ministers in relation to ambulance handover delays/timings in 2024, WAST continues to adopt the 15 minute handover expectation/assumption for their rostering. Yet I received evidence that hospitals across Wales are only delivering this expectation around 10-20% of the time”

“A health and social care system leadership response is required to current operational pressures on a par to the Covid-19 response”

“For the past two iterations of the framework, I have been explicitly clear of my expectation that Health Boards prioritise plans to improve timeliness of ambulance patient handover to free up ambulance clinicians to respond to patients in the community...I have also set a priority for improvement of patient flow”