Concern over waiting times at Bradford's A&E department

Owen West, a retired Bradford police officer, was with a relative who needed medical attention when he noticed lengthy queues of ambulances waiting to hand over patients to A&E staff at BRI. 

Once inside the hospital, he said the crews and patients were facing long waiting times as busy nurses and doctors worked to attend to people's needs.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTHFT) said it had been an "exceptionally busy" bank holiday period and urged people to only attend A&E in a life or limb-threatening emergency. 

Mr West praised the work of NHS staff, but hit out at the Government.

Patient had lengthy waiting times at BRI on Tuesday (Image: UGC)

With a picture from the hospital, Mr West tweeted: "Current scenes at Bradford Royal Infirmary.

"Nine paramedic crews waiting to handover. 1.5 hours wait time to release 999 crews.

"The paramedics and A&E staff are utterly brilliant. This is the fault of Government policy and underfunding.

Another tweet showed the ambulance queues at the hospital and Mr West said: "Absolutely heroic work by our NHS. All these crews are waiting in the corridors to handover. Bradford Royal Infirmary now."

Ambulances queued up at Bradford Royal Infirmary on Tuesday (Image: UGC)

Speaking to the T&A, Mr West said: "I'm a retired police officer and I worked 30 years with a lot of that time spent in Bradford. I've never seen scenes like that at A&E in my time.

"And later on in the day, there were 11 ambulances waiting to hand over patients.

"There were people in chairs in the corridor so desperate to be seen but this was not the fault of the staff there.

"The hospital staff were superb in their handling of the situation. There were two nurses that I could see who did a fantastic job of looking after people.

"My thoughts go out to the ambulance crews as well. They were fantastic.

"My main criticism is the Government's underfunding of the NHS. The NHS is collapsing under our eyes."

NHS targets say patients who go to A&E should be seen within four hours.

Their current target is for 95 per cent of patients to wait less than the four-hour target.

According to latest data from the NHS for March 2023, the figure for BRI was 72 per cent. 

Saj Azeb, chief operating officer and deputy chief executive at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We have been exceptionally busy over the bank holiday period and we apologise for the long waits for ambulance handovers that some patients experienced yesterday.

“Generally our ambulance handovers times are good and we have seen a significant improvement since January, with almost 80 per cent of patients arriving by ambulance handed over within 15 minutes of arrival.

“However, demand at the front door over the last 10 days has been extremely high with a 12 per cent increase in A&E attendances compared to April.

“This has placed additional pressure on our urgent care system which unfortunately resulted in the handover delays seen yesterday.

“We would ask patients to choose wisely and only attend A&E if you have a life or limb-threatening emergency. For other conditions, please visit www.111.nhs.uk, call 111 or contact your local GP or pharmacist.”

Addressing concerns about underfunding the NHS, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “No one should have to wait longer than necessary to access urgent and emergency care, and waiting times have substantially reduced from the peak of winter pressures in December.

“Our Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan will allow people to be seen quicker by scaling up community teams, expanding virtual wards, and getting 800 new ambulances on the road.

“This is on top of £750 million we’ve provided this winter to speed up hospital discharge and free up beds and up to £14.1 billion for health and social care over the next two years, on top of record funding.”