Margaret McCartney: Let’s have a report on what resources the NHS needs

I fully agree with Professor Ted Baker, Chief Inspector of Hospitals that;

"Any patient physically on the hospital site should be regarded as under the care of the emergency department and should be booked into the department without delay; the clock should start ticking at that point. Patients should not wait in ambulances and should not be delayed being booked into the department, as there should be no ‘two tier’ system whereby patients who arrive independently are booked in on arrival."

Surely this would free up substantial ambulance resources to enable ambulance trusts to meet their own target response times. I am aware many crews and their patients are kept waiting outside emergency departments for at least an hour.

Ambulance trusts struggle to meet response times and also to retain trained paramedic staff. Long waits outside hospitals are a significant waste of resources.

Bob Bunney