‘Stunning waste’: NHS is spending £1m every week on personal ambulances for emergencies, union says

The NHS has been accused of “shocking waste” after analysis by a commerce union discovered it was spending greater than £1m every week on personal ambulances for emergency calls.

Unison – whose members have simply accepted a brand new authorities pay deal – says it had responses from two-thirds of ambulance trusts in England that paid personal firms to offer emergency cowl for essential sufferers.

It mentioned greater than a dozen personal firms have been utilized by trusts in England to try to plug holes and meet response instances amid what it known as overwhelming demand.

Crews and automobiles are booked as much as a 12 months prematurely, Unison claimed, so they’re out there to response to emergency incidents equivalent to strokes and street site visitors accidents.

It added that spending the cash on personal 999 care was a “short-term fix, not a long-term solution to the crisis in ambulance services”.

Speaking forward of the union’s annual well being convention in Bournemouth, Unison’s head of well being Sara Gorton mentioned: “This spend on private 999 services shows a lack of long-term planning and is a shocking waste of money.

“It’s nothing greater than a sticking plaster answer. Ambulance companies are in a determined state as a result of the federal government has failed to speculate long run.

“Patients are waiting ages for help to arrive or worse still dying before crews can reach them. Others are stuck in emergency vehicles outside hospitals for hours and hours on end waiting for a bed.”

She urged ministers to supply “proper funding to tackle increasing demand and pay staff properly”.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson mentioned: “We are working hard to improve ambulance waiting times which have substantially reduced from the peak of winter pressures in December 2022.

“Our Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan will enable individuals to be seen faster by scaling up neighborhood groups, increasing digital wards, and getting 800 new ambulances on the street. This is on high of £750m we supplied this winter to hurry up hospital discharge and liberate beds.”

Despite Unison members accepting a pay deal, negotiations proceed with the Royal College of Nursing, which introduced on Friday that its members will strike for 48 hours from 8pm on 30 April after rejecting the supply.

NHS nurses in emergency departments, intensive care and most cancers wards can even take industrial motion for the primary time.

Matthew Taylor, chief government of the NHS Confederation, which represents well being trusts, raised considerations over the potential for nurses and junior medical doctors strolling out on the similar time within the dispute over pay.

“We are concerned about the speculation that the possibility of a combination of junior doctors’ and nurses’ action, so both of these things would be a significant escalation,” he advised Sky News.

“It’s very difficult to see how either of those things wouldn’t endanger patient safety and dignity.”

Health Secretary Steve Barclay has advised the union: “The decision to refuse at this stage any exemptions for even the most urgent and life-threatening treatment during this action will, I fear, put patients at risk.”

The Royal College of Nursing has mentioned there are presently no plans to coordinate strike motion with the British Medical Association.