Patients are having to wait nearly 100 MINUTES just for their 999 calls to be answered

People calling 999 for an ambulance are forced to wait up to 1 hour and 37 minutes for call handlers to pick up the phone, a study shows.

Patients also had to wait up to 3 hours for their NHS 111 calls to be answered in December, according to Freedom of Information responses from ambulance trusts.

Meanwhile, those using the 111 service whose symptoms required a nurse callback wait more than a day to hear from the service.

The responses, disclosed to the Labor Party, show that last year a patient in the North West had to wait more than 40 hours to discuss their symptoms with a qualified doctor, while people in other parts of England were forced to wait 30 hours. o’clock.

Patients waited longer than ever for ambulances in December, according to official NHS figures.

Ambulances took an average of 90 minutes to make ‘category two’ calls, which included conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.

The NHS target for such an incident is 18 minutes.

In all, more than 50,000 ambulance calls continued to ring for five minutes or more before being answered.

The NHS does not publish the number of people who hung up before their call was answered.

Wes Streeting MP, Labour’s health spokesman, said: ‘After 13 years of conservative mismanagement of the NHS, patients can no longer be sure that their 999 call will be answered or that an ambulance will arrive when they need one.

“People just pray that they don’t get sick or have an accident.

“Labour will launch the biggest expansion of NHS staff training in history, paid for by abolishing non-doms, so the NHS is there for us when we need it again.”