Ambulance waits in critical cases have soared in most council areas

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Shock new figures have revealed patients in life-threatening cases are facing soaring waits for an ambulance.Response times for so-called purple calls are taking longer than the eight minute target in most council areas.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “Anyone can see that this is likely to be one of the hardest winters the NHS has ever faced.

Staff are already overwhelmed and patients are already suffering. “The Scottish Government have continuously ignored the warnings of ambulance staff.” The Daily Record has led a campaign exposing the harrowing waits experiences by patients who desperately need an ambulance.Figures now reveal the shocking delays in large swathes of Scotland, with the stats mapping out wait times over the past three years.They show the average wait times for purple calls - the highest priority - breached the 8-minute target in 25 of 32 local authorities in 2021/22.53% of patients in the purple category are experiencing cardiac arrest.The highest average waiting time for purple calls was in the Borders, where patients waited an average of 12 minutes and 46 seconds.Patients in Aberdeenshire, Shetland, the Western Isles and Angus also averaged over 12 minutes.The national average in 2019/2020 was seven minutes and 34 seconds, but the figure rose to eight minutes and fifty two seconds in 2021/22.We revealed recenty how a woman who collapsed with a suspected heart attack said she had to wait five hours in the back of an ambulance before being seen at A+E.Roseanna Clarkin, 39, told the Record: “We couldn’t even get parked near A&E because there were another 16 ambulances waiting there with patients already.”Cole-Hamilton blasted: “People in life-threatening situations need to know that