UK ambulance service struggles in winter health care crisis

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of patients each week are being stranded for long stretches in ambulances outside overflowing British hospitals, a growing crisis that has likely contributed to scores of deaths, health care leaders said Thursday.

The U.K.'s ambulance service is seizing up in some areas as the country’s health system faces an inferno of pressures, including rising demand for care after pandemic restrictions were eased; a surge in flu and other winter viruses after two lockdown years; and staff shortages from pandemic burnout and a post-Brexit drought of European workers in Britain. Thousands of hospital beds are also occupied by people who are fit to be discharged but have nowhere to go because of a dearth of places for long-term care.

Official statistics show that ambulances in many areas are stuck waiting outside hospital emergency departments, sometimes for hours, because there are no beds for the patients. Figures published Thursday by the National Health Service showed 31% of patients arriving at hospitals in England by ambulance waited at least 30 minutes to be handed over last week, and 15% waited more than an hour.

Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the BBC that more than 200 people who died in England last week were affected by “problems with urgent and emergency care.”