{"id":990627,"date":"2026-05-28T17:59:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/990627\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T17:59:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:59:43","slug":"two-hour-ambulance-offloads-making-things-worse-northern-ireland-emergency-medics-say-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/990627\/","title":{"rendered":"Two hour ambulance offloads making things worse, Northern Ireland emergency medics say \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emergency doctors have said a new policy for ambulances to offload patients within two hours <\/a>is making things worse.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Appearing before Stormont\u2019s Health Committee on Thursday, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine reported the views of clinical directors in hospital EDs.<\/p>\n

They also discussed their recent report linking over 1,000 excess deaths to waits over 12 hours in EDs.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Jeffrey<\/a>\"Jeffrey<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr Michael Perry, the RCEM\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"DrDr Michael Perry, RCEM Northern Ireland Vice President, at the Stormont Health Committee. <\/p>\n

A total of 550 hospital patients on Tuesday were also medically cleared to leave, but had complex discharge needs.<\/p>\n

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%.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On the ambulance offload policy, he said that after a survey of clinical directors across the nine Type 1 EDs – over half found that \u201calthough the handover times have improved for ambulances, overcrowding has worsened within the departments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey feel that we\u2019re still focusing very much on the front door solutions rather than actually tackling flow through the system and exit block.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cTo be totally straight, we really do support rapid ambulance offloads. They shouldn\u2019t even be a thing\u2026if we have proper flow through our system the ambulance would arrive and be offloaded when they come to the front door.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s the understanding of why these delays happen in the first place, why are patients waiting 8-10 hours?\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if patients are spending less time in ambulances, he said: \u201cIt\u2019s more patients being put on to chairs, to corridors. It\u2019s not really tackled what we think is the fundamental problem which is the back door.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThis week, from my experience on the floor, I\u2019m certainly seeing that it\u2019s being tested very strongly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alliance MLA Danny Donnelly said the RCEM\u2019s report on excess deaths were \u201cflashing red alarm bells that really should be screaming at us that is a systemic issue and that it does require a systemic change.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said a better focus would be on reducing delayed patient discharges and improving social care arrangements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emergency doctors have said a new policy for ambulances to offload patients within two hours is making things…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":990628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[16186,26684,23523,1144,16,15],"class_list":["post-990627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-ambulance","tag-emergency-department","tag-health-and-social-care","tag-northern-ireland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116653508860525131","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990627","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=990627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/990628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}