AN AMBULANCE boss has blamed delays in handing over patients at hospitals for slow emergency response times.

Last month, 757 patients waited for more than an hour in an ambulance after arriving at accident and emergency departments in Essex.

Anthony Marsh, chief executive of the East of England Ambulance Service, said crews are unable to respond to emergency calls because they are waiting at hospitals.

In December, there were 128 waits of more than 60 minutes at Southend Hospital, 25 at Basildon Hospital and 242 at Colchester General Hospital.

There were 7,209 incidents where handovers took 15 minutes or more at Essex’s five A&E departments.

Dr Marsh, in a report to the board, said: “We are experiencing significant pressures from other parts of the healthcare system. The delays in hospital hand-over times prevents ambulances from responding to further patients and is reaching intolerable levels.

“The delays are outside of our control, but prevent us from responding to the next emergency call we may be holding.”

Dr Marsh said the ambulance trust had lost the equivalent of seven ambulance shifts per day to handover delays in 2014.

Government targets require ambulance services to respond to 75 per cent of high-priority emergency calls, known as red 1 and red 2, within eight minutes. The target has been missed in Essex every month since April. In December, 72.7 per cent of red 1 calls and 60.5 per cent of red 2 calls were responded to within eight minutes.

Dr Marsh also cited increased demand for performance issues within the trust. In recent weeks, the number of daily emergency calls have been 25 per cent higher than the same day last year. Activity in December was 10 per cent higher than the previous year across the region.

Dr Marsh said: “We are making good progress with our performance recovery, but there are a significant number of considerations affecting our ability to meet the national standards.”

The trust is replacing all its emergency vehicles – by April it wants no frontline vehicles to be more than five years old.