ONE in 14 A&E patients faced lengthy handover delays at Dorset County Hospital Trust after arriving by ambulance at the start of the month, figures show.

The Royal College for Emergency Medicine said the “dreadful” delays nationally were causing serious harm to patients and driving staff to leave the NHS.

NHS England data shows 315 people arrived at Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust A&E by ambulance in the week to December 5.

Of them, 23 (7%) waited more than 30 minutes before being handed over to A&E staff, with five (2%) waiting more than an hour.

The NHS has a target of 15 minutes for ambulance handovers, but only delays longer than half an hour are recorded.

The worst day for delays at Dorset County Hospital Trust was November 29, when 26% of patients faced long waits – the highest proportion recorded across the week.

A spokesman for Dorset County Hospital said: “Despite the unprecedented pressures on our hospital, we continue to have one of the lowest proportion of ambulance handover delays in the south west and we are incredibly proud of our staff for their ongoing hard work, dedication and commitment to provide outstanding care for our patients.

“We have a comprehensive system in place to limit ambulance handover times and ensure patients can be assessed and treated as quickly as possible.

“It’s important to recognise that our Emergency Department should only be used in serious or life-threatening situations. If patients attend our department with minor injuries they will face a lengthy wait as we need to treat patients in order of clinical need.

“Local people can help us manage the demand on our services by using the most appropriate health service for their need, such as their GP, local pharmacy, Minor Injuries Unit or NHS 111.”

Dr Ian Higginson, vice president at the RCEM, said the coronavirus pandemic made the “hidden” issue of hospital crowding visible across the country.

He said: “We used to say that emergency departments were thought of as having elastic walls – we would desperately try to get patients in to release ambulances back onto the road.

“That meant we would bring patients into emergency departments and would end up putting them in corridors, doubling up patients in cubicles, doing all sorts of things that were horrible for patients and led to crowding.”

Dr Higginson said Covid infection control measures meant patients could no longer be crammed into A&E departments during busy periods.

He added: “That meant we had to stop offloading ambulances – a problem hidden inside emergency departments became very visible.”

Lengthy ambulance handover times lead to delays in assessment and treatment and fewer ambulances being available to respond to emergencies, as well as having a knock-on effect on staff, Dr Higginson said.

He added: “There has been a chronic long-term failure in leadership and planning around the emergency care system and the NHS for many years.

“Repeated warnings about this problem have been ignored.”

Charity the Health Foundation said the NHS had little choice but to "weather the winter storm".

Tim Gardner, senior policy fellow, said: “As well as focusing on hospitals, the recovery plan will need to boost services in primary care and care in the community to keep more people from becoming ill in the first place.”

NHS England said last month, staff answered the highest number of 999 calls for any November on record – an average of around one every three seconds – and it was also the busiest November on record for A&E, with more than two million patients seen.

Professor Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said staff were continuing to address backlogs in the face of “sustained pressure” on urgent and emergency care.

He added the NHS was heading into a “challenging winter” and the impact of the new Omicron variant of coronavirus was still unknown, but encouraged people to come forward for their booster jabs.