PEOPLE reportedly had to wait in ambulances for eight hours at a Wirral hospital on September 16 as paramedics were unable to transfer people over. The Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said the delays were due to “extremely high levels of people” attending Arrowe Park’s accident and emergency department.

During a Wirral Council adult health and social care committee on September 17, Cllr Craig McDonald-Walsh said he was told by paramedics there was an eight hour wait for paramedics on September 16 to be able to hand over patients at Arrowe Park Hospital. The comments came during a discussion around the availability of social care beds.

Councillors were discussing a performance report which includes a number of statistics about the quality of care people are receiving across Wirral. One statistic showed there was the capacity of care home beds with 236 vacancies in July or around 7% of the total number of beds in care homes across the Wirral.

Cllr Walsh-McDonald asked given the difficulty in transferring patients from hospital if beds are full elsewhere whether the figures were considered “good” or “enough” and how it compared to other areas. In response, lead commissioner for community care Jayne Marshall said they were “aware of some of the urgent pressures at Arrowe Park the previous week and were involved in those escalation meetings around ambulance delays and corridor care.”

She said none of the delays related to adult social care and there was capacity within the care home market. She said between 6 and 10% was considered “okay” and “a safe number for us.”

Asked about current hospital pressures, a Wirral University Teaching Hospital spokesperson said: “There have been extremely high levels of people attending our Emergency Department, however we have systems in place in the Emergency Department to ensure that patient safety is a priority, and this includes ensuring that ambulance crews are released as quickly as possible so that the crews can return to responding to calls from our patients in the community.

“Ambulance handover is also directly linked to bed occupancy and the ability to discharge patients who no longer require a hospital bed. Significant progress has been made with discharging our patients who require ongoing social care support or continued therapeutic care. Improvements have been driven by the introduction of our new Transfer of Care Hub and the expansion of capacity within social care and the launch of the Home First Service.

“The Trust continues to work with Wirral Community Health and Care Trust, Wirral Borough Council and the ambulance service to improve ambulance handover times.

“As we head into winter, it is even more important that patients who do not have an emergency do contact 111 in the first instance or go to an Urgent Treatment Centre, a Walk-in Centre, GP or pharmacist.”

Councillors also raised concerns during the meeting about a number of care homes that were rated inadequate or requiring improvement by the Care Quality Commission. According to the report, 33 homes require improvement while three are inadequate.

Councillors also received an update on an adult fostering service called Shared Lives.