Emergency doctors have said a new policy for ambulances to offload patients within two hours is making things worse.
The Release to Rescue policy was introduced at the end of April, ordering ambulances not to wait more than two hours with patients at hospitals.
Appearing before Stormont’s Health Committee on Thursday, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine reported the views of clinical directors in hospital EDs.
They also discussed their recent report linking over 1,000 excess deaths to waits over 12 hours in EDs.
Dr Michael Perry, the RCEM’s Northern Ireland Vice President, told MLAs that on Tuesday this week there were 326 patients in EDs waiting for a hospital bed and 327 waiting over 12 hours.
Dr Michael Perry, RCEM Northern Ireland Vice President, at the Stormont Health Committee.
A total of 550 hospital patients on Tuesday were also medically cleared to leave, but had complex discharge needs.
With a target that 95% of ED patients should be treated within four hours, he said the Northern Ireland performance in one week of May was only 36%.
“I don’t want us to fall into the trap of thinking this is the same everywhere, we are in a worse situation than the rest of the devolved nations,” he said.
On the ambulance offload policy, he said that after a survey of clinical directors across the nine Type 1 EDs – over half found that “although the handover times have improved for ambulances, overcrowding has worsened within the departments.
“They feel that we’re still focusing very much on the front door solutions rather than actually tackling flow through the system and exit block.”
He added: “To be totally straight, we really do support rapid ambulance offloads. They shouldn’t even be a thing…if we have proper flow through our system the ambulance would arrive and be offloaded when they come to the front door.
“But it’s the understanding of why these delays happen in the first place, why are patients waiting 8-10 hours?”
Even if patients are spending less time in ambulances, he said: “It’s more patients being put on to chairs, to corridors. It’s not really tackled what we think is the fundamental problem which is the back door.”
He added: “This week, from my experience on the floor, I’m certainly seeing that it’s being tested very strongly.”
Alliance MLA Danny Donnelly said the RCEM’s report on excess deaths were “flashing red alarm bells that really should be screaming at us that is a systemic issue and that it does require a systemic change.”
He said a better focus would be on reducing delayed patient discharges and improving social care arrangements.