Wednesday 25 May 2022 10:37 PM Ambulances are approaching 'Titanic moment' that could see them stop responding ... trends now

West Midlands Ambulance Service could stop responding to 999 calls in August as the ambulance trust approaches a 'Titanic moment' amid overcrowding in hospitals, its nursing director has said.

Mark Docherty, of West Midlands Ambulance Service, said patients were 'dying every day' from avoidable causes created by ambulance delays and that he could not understand why NHS England and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) were 'not all over' the issue.

In an interview with the Health Service Journal (HSJ), Mr Docherty said rising numbers of people were waiting in the back of ambulances for 24 hours before being admitted to hospital, and that serious incidents have quadrupled in the past year, largely due to severe delays.

He said the situation was now so serious that he is predicting the service will collapse in August.

'Around August 17 is the day I think it will all fail... I've been asked how I can be so specific, but that date is when a third of our resource (will be) lost to delays, and that will mean we just can't respond.

'Mathematically it will be a bit like a Titanic moment.

'It will be a mathematical (certainty) that this thing is sinking, and it will be pretty much beyond the tipping point by then.'

It comes as documents from a quality governance meeting at the trust in March showed another director warning that 'deaths are happening which should not be happening' and, nationally, patients are being let down in a 'catastrophic situation'.

England-wide NHS data for March shows ambulance trusts across the country missing a raft of targets, including too-slow response times to the most urgent incidents.

The

read more from dailymail.....