Hospital drop off took nearly 2hours

It was the longest ambulance downtime at the hospital during the month with seven other locations across Northern Ireland experiencing lengthier turnarounds.

The longest turnaround was over five hours and occurred at the Ulster Hospital.

Altnagelvin’s ambulance downtime was less than at the Ulster Hospital (5:26:15), Craigavon Area Hospital (3:51:23), Royal Victoria hospital (3:20:00), Daisy Hill Hospital (3:05:49), Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital (2:54:11), Belfast City Hospital (2:34) and the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children (2:03:59).

The longest turnarounds at Gransha and Foyle Hospice were 20mins and 6mins respectively.

The Sentinel recently reported how fifty-four ambulance turnarounds at Altnagelvin took more than 45 minutes during February.

The Health Minister Edwin Poots revealed that in total, out of 12,798 attendances by a resource at a hospital, turnaround time exceeded two hours on 72 occasions and that this represented just 0.6 per cent of all attendances across the region.

Ambulance downtime refers to the turnaround time measured from when an ambulance arrives at an A&E department until it has ‘cleared’ the location, the Health Minister has revealed.

This included patient handover to relevant clinical personnel and making the vehicle ready for the next call.

At Altnagelvin a minority (54 of a total of 1,171) turnarounds took more than 45 minutes. One hundred and forty five took over 30 minutes; 612 took over 15 minutes and 360 took less than 15 minutes.