Pensioner waits more than 9 hours for ambulance after suffering heat stroke as UK hits heatwave

EMBARGO: 22.30 Wednesday 31st July

• Freedom of Information Act (FOI) on heat strokes reveals a pensioner in the East Midlands waited close to nine-and-a-half-hours for an ambulance last year.

• FOI shows an almost doubling of ambulance response times when going on call outs involving heat stroke since 2018/19, rising from 32 minutes to 59 minutes in 2023/24.

• Lib Dem Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper calls for urgent cross-party talks on social care and a review of the UK's preparedness for heat waves saying: “We’ve heard too many harrowing heatstroke stories from people waiting hours in a state of confusion for an ambulance to arrive.”

A pensioner in the East Midlands waited close to nine-and-a-half-hours for an ambulance last year a Liberal Democrat FOI has revealed as the UK is in the midst of a heatwave following high temperatures this week.

The data also revealed that there has been a staggering 84% increase in ambulance response times when going on call outs involving heat stroke since 2018/19, rising from 32 minutes to 59 minutes in 2023/24.

The South East Coast saw the largest rise in response times for these incidents with responses averaging 52 minutes last year compared with 18 minutes in 2018/19. That is a shocking 189% increase.

Wales had the longest response time for heat stroke incidents at more than two hours (138 minutes), up from 55 minutes in 2018/19. This was also the trust which saw the longest wait for all patients with heat stroke last year at a shocking 11 hours and 16 minutes.

Four of the seven ambulance trusts who responded to the FOI with complete data showed that their response times for pensioners were on average higher than they were for all patients. 

The average response time for someone over the age of 65 suffering from heat stroke was 54 minutes, up 38% on the 39 minutes it was in 2018/19. This included one wait for a pensioner in the East Midlands of 9 hours and 27 minutes last year. 

The Liberal Democrats said the data was “disturbing” and showed “how the Conservatives have brought our NHS to its knees.” The party is calling on the Labour Government to start cross party talks on social care in order to fix the crisis in the sector which would free up the beds in hospitals to prevent handover delays and long ambulance response times and to launch a review of the UK’s preparedness for heat waves.

Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson, Daisy Cooper MP said:

“We’ve heard too many harrowing heatstroke stories from people waiting hours in a state of confusion for an ambulance to arrive.

“This deeply disturbing data just lays bare once again how the Conservatives have brought our NHS to its knees, leaving people wondering if an ambulance will ever turn up. That needs to change. 

“We need urgent cross party talks to create a rescue plan for social care, so we can prevent people from getting heatstroke in the first place as well as helping people out of hospitals when they don’t need to be there, freeing up beds in hospitals and preventing ambulance handover delays. We also need a review of our preparedness for heat waves. 

“For too long patients have been left without the high quality community services they need and staff have been left without the resources to do their job.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

The data from the Liberal Democrat FOI can be found here.

Notes from ambulance trusts:

East of England: Number of call outs responded to, average response time and single longest response time where the terms 'heatstroke' or 'heat stroke' appeared in the 'problem description' field of the incident record.

East Midlands: Chief Complaint in ('Heat Exposure', 'Heat/Cold Exposure')  OR DESPATCH CODE IN ('20')OR SYMPTOMGROUP IN ('1114') OR SYMPTOMDISCRIMINATOR IN ('4049').

Wales: We do not have a code that specifically focuses on Heat Stroke incidents. The data includes all incidents where Nature of Incident Dispatch Code 20 Heat / Cold Exposure was applied. The data also includes those incidents where the H Suffix (Heat) was applied.

South Western: Looking at all patients records where the main symptom or provisional diagnosis listed as 'Heat Illness','Heat stroke / sun stroke' or 'Exposure to heat'. Patients over 65 at the time of clinical episode. The Clinical recording system was offline between 17 July 2023 and 11 October 2023 due to a cyber incident. There are no records during this period.

Yorkshire: Please note that YAS does not have a specific dispatch code for ‘heat stroke’, so has provided the data for the ‘heat exposure’ dispatch codes. The following ‘call stopped’ reasons have been excluded: ‘For information only’, ‘test incident’, ‘call entered in error’, ‘duplicate call’ and ‘assisted another ambulance service’.