East Midlands Ambulance Service spent 3,500 fewer hours waiting to drop off patients at hospitals in February

East Midlands Ambulance Service crews spent 3,500 fewer hours waiting at hospitals in February after year-on-year handover delays significantly declined.

The service, known as EMAS, covers Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire.

Alongside hospitals, it dealt with increased demand over winter due to seasonal pressures from flu, norovirus and other surges in hospitals.

It lost 25,432 hours to patient hospital handovers lasting more than 15 minutes in December 2024 and lost 22,300 hours in January 2025. In Lincolnshire alone, it was more than 6,000 hours.

The delays occur when ambulance crews are left waiting to pass patients over to the care of busy hospitals once they arrived from a call, meaning fewer free ambulances are available.

The February figure shows a continued improvement on lost hours for the service, with EMAS losing 15,484 hours in February- this is 3,598 fewer than February 2024.

The service’s board met today (Tuesday, March 4) to discuss its operational performance.

Ben Holdaway, EMAS director of operations, said: “Within that reduction there was a 25 per cent reduction in our duplicate calls which is a strong case to say people aren’t ringing back and looking where we are.

“Taking the duplicate calls out, what we saw was a three per cent increase in actual 999 calls, so there’s a positive in there that we are getting to patients quicker.”

A 45-minute ambulance handover scheme being rolled out across the region has played a part in the service’s improved figures.

This involves patients being handed over to A&E nurses by ambulance staff within 45 minutes, where clinically acceptable.

It was introduced at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham in December, at Royal Derby Hospital in January, and was implemented at Grimsby Hospital and Scunthorpe General Hospital in February- it will be starting in Leicester this week.

Between December 13 2024 and January 13 2025 the average handover in Nottingham was 39 minutes and 48 seconds- down from just under one hour and eight minutes in the same period the year before.

This has fallen to 31 minutes and 58 seconds as the January average, making Nottinghamshire the best regional performer for average ambulance response times, with Leicestershire having the longest average at 1 hour, seven minutes and 28 seconds.

Nottinghamshire also saw a big improvement in the hours lost to handovers, with 2,050 hours lost during February 2025, compared to 5,215 in February 2024.

Keeley Sheldon, director of quality, told the board there had been 253 breaches in minimum care standards in patients’ transitions from the ambulance to the hospital in February- there were 425 reported in January.

She said this decrease was “absolutely that direct baring of the implementation of the 45-minute handover [scheme]- the reduce in lost hours is obviously reducing those breaches“.

Murray Macdonald, non-executive director, asked how the scheme was doing across the four hospitals.

Mr Holdaway replied: “We see positive results from all of them. What we saw in the latter half of February was that it was harder for them to keep it going.

“We see that impact at the start of the week but as we get through the week it gets a lot better.”

Mr Henderson added: “We’re working closely with the system to see these improvements.

“[But] we’ve still got to be cautious, we’ve still lost 15.5 thousand hours in February. We’re still taking over the 30 minutes to get to our patients against the constitutional 18 minute standard.”