Too many ambulances with non-urgent cases

I think they were right to make this decision as it is well known that far too many patients arriving at A&E are not emergency cases and should have been treated at home or at their GP surgery.

These non-urgent cases are part of the reason for ambulances queueing at A&E when their time would be better spent on the real emergencies and being able to meet their targets.

It should not, however, be at the expense of A&E by blaming them for the delays.

A&E departments have an impossible target that cannot be met at busy periods as you cannot accommodate an unknown input, in this case, the number of patients, as

any private company will tell you.

It is not so well known that the ambulance service has a big incentive for this queueing as I understand that they charge the NHS £1,000 for a one-hour wait and £500 for half an hour.

No wonder those who govern their actions weren’t best pleased at them trying to improve the service.

Let’s hope that any future monitoring includes the number of non-urgent cases that turn up on a daily basis and get rid of this one sided charge.

Malcolm Mills

Mayfield Close,

Worthing