{"id":599448,"date":"2025-11-28T15:23:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T15:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/599448\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T15:23:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T15:23:23","slug":"concerns-as-ambulances-are-still-being-left-stuck-outside-busy-birmingham-hospitals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/599448\/","title":{"rendered":"Concerns as ambulances are still being left stuck outside busy Birmingham hospitals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Work is being carried out to tackle the issue and improve the wellbeing of ambulance staffGurdip Thandi<\/strong><\/a> Local Democracy Reporter, Gurdip Thandi<\/strong> and Local Democracy Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n

13:49, 28 Nov 2025<\/p>\n

\"AA West Midlands Ambulance Service stock image of an ambulance (Image: West Midlands Ambulance Service\/PA Wire)<\/p>\n

Ambulances are still spending too much time stuck outside Birmingham hospitals due to being unable to transfer patients to busy departments.<\/p>\n

Members of the University Hospitals Birmingham<\/a> (UHB) NHS<\/a> Foundation Trust’s board were told there had been an increase in 45 minute ambulance handover breaches.<\/p>\n

This has raised concerns for the wellbeing of West Midlands Ambulance Service<\/a> (WMAS) staff, particularly those unable to finish shifts on time as a result.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: <\/strong>Birmingham City’s ambitious stadium plans ‘starting to become a reality’ in new milestone<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bosses heard work is now taking place between UHB and WMAS to draw up a plan to alleviate the issue.<\/p>\n

A report to the board said there had been a total of 3,831 breaches at Queen Elizabeth, Heartlands and Good Hope hospitals in September compared with 3,410 in August.<\/p>\n

But all three hospitals had shown improvement in average ambulance handover times in September 2025 when compared with September 2024.<\/p>\n

Data showed Queen Elizabeth Hospital<\/a> recorded an average handover time of 44 minutes and 15 seconds this year, an improvement on the time of just over one hour and 10 minutes in September 2024.<\/p>\n

Heartlands Hospital recorded the highest average time in September 2024 of just over one hour and 35 minutes but this is now down to 56 minutes and 37 seconds.<\/p>\n

And while Good Hope Hospital still has an average over an hour (1:03.54), this is much less than in September 2024 when it recorded ambulance waits of just over one hour and 28 minutes.<\/p>\n

The report said the issue continues to have NHS England oversight and they were working towards an average ambulance handover of 15 minutes with a target that no handover takes more than 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

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Iain Pickles, UHB chief operating officer, said: “45 minute ambulance handovers continues to be a persistent challenge.<\/p>\n

“Over 40 per cent of vehicles arriving at UHB have taken more than 45 minutes to handover. We know we are an outlier in that regard.<\/p>\n

“It is an area which requires some real focus. We met with counterparts from West Midlands Ambulance Service to agree how we can co-develop a plan to address that.<\/p>\n

“We agreed in the immediate term to focus on a particular piece of work on how do we manage that particularly around shift handover for West Midlands Ambulance Service crews.<\/p>\n

“We know there are a number of colleagues from WMAS who are delayed finishing shifts which has a significant impact on their wellbeing.<\/p>\n

“We agreed we would do some immediate work to try to resolve that as a start of doing a broader piece of collaborative work with WMAS on how we really tackle the delayed handover issue more substantively.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Work is being carried out to tackle the issue and improve the wellbeing of ambulance staffGurdip Thandi Local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,211,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-599448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-nhs","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115628016868404959","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}