Cork hospitals have worst ambulance turnaround times

Paramedic ambulance units parked to discharge patients at Mercy University Hospital Accident & Emergency Department. Picture: Larry Cummins

Almost 239,000 ambulances spent over half an hour at a hospital last year, before offloading a patient and getting back on the road.

It represents four out of every five ambulances that arrived at emergency departments.

Turnaround times involve the interval between an ambulance's arrival at a hospital to when the crew has handed over a patient and is ready to take another call.

The HSE's target time is less than 30 minutes. However, that aim was only met in 20.8% of cases last year.

The worst performer last year was Cork University Hospital, where the target was only met in 4.5% of cases.

That was followed by Mercy University Hospital also in Cork, at 5.5%.

The target was met in less than 10% of cases in five other hospitals, according to freedom of information files.

David Hall, the chief executive of Lifeline Ambulance Service, says many ambulances wait a lot longer than half an hour.

"Anybody involved in the ambulance service from anywhere in the country will tell you that they have had a whole range of times from minutes right up to multiple hours waiting for a handover of a patient and being able to release the ambulance back again," he said.

"It is probably the single biggest contributing factor to the knock-on response times of ambulances."

Mr Hall said the issue is caused by overcrowded emergency departments.

"Emergency departments are under immense pressure and then you have sick people coming in via ambulance on top of that.

"Physically having somewhere to put people and having the staff and the time to be able to take handovers of patients by ambulance and paramedic staff is causing a delay and that ambulance is now off the road."