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The total number of people waiting over two hours for an ambulance has risen by more than 800% in four years, figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives show.

The Freedom of Information request reveals that over 40,000 emergency callers waited more than 120 minutes for an ambulance in 2021-22, compared with around 17,300 in the previous year, 14,800 in 2019-20 and just 4,438 four years ago.

This includes a fivefold rise in the number of the most serious ‘red’ and ‘purple’ incidents – which include heart attacks and strokes – where patients waited over two hours for a response since 2018. The target time is eight minutes.

In total, 46,656 critically ill ‘red’ and ‘purple’ patients waited over ten minutes to be seen in 2021-22, 40% of all call outs in the category.

Shadow Health Secretary Dr Sandesh Gulhane has said that the data shows ambulance wait times are “spiralling out of control”, in a trend that predates the pandemic.

Scottish Conservative Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health, Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “This shocking data exposes how ambulance wait times have been spiralling out of control since well before the pandemic.

“The SNP has been failing the NHS for years even before the Covid struck – and now our ambulance service is at breaking point.

“Slow turnaround times and record waits at A&E have left over 40,000 Scots – some of whom will have been critically ill – waiting more than two hours for emergency help to arrive.

“These delays inevitably lead to more suffering for patients and, ultimately, avoidable deaths.

“There is a reason the ambulance service aims to reach emergency patients within eight minutes. If these patients are waiting more than two hours, they will obviously come to harm or even die. If that was your loved one, you would rightly be horrified.  

“This shameful state of affairs is symptomatic of the interconnected crises that have plagued our NHS for years under successive SNP Health Secretaries – but it cannot be allowed to continue.”

Notes:

The total number of people waiting more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive was nine times higher in 2021-22 than in 2018-19. In 2018-19, around 4,438 callers - across all categories - had to wait over two hours for an ambulance to arrive. This increased to 40,166 callers in 2021-22, an increase of over 805%. The number of people waiting over two hours for an ambulance to arrive also increased nine-fold as a proportion of total calls. (FOI available on request).

The number of people waiting over two hours for an ambulance to arrive more than doubled in a year. In 2020-21, the number of people – across all categories – waiting more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive was 17,338. In 2021-22, the number was 40,166, an increase of over 131%. As a proportion of total calls, the number of people waiting over two hours for an ambulance to arrive also doubled. (FOI available on request).

Even before the pandemic, the number of people waiting more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive was spiralling out of control. In 2018-19, 4,438 callers waited more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive. In 2019-20, 14,836 callers waited more than two hours. That is a three-fold increase, equivalent to over 239%. (FOI available on request).

The number of critically ill patients waiting more than 10 minutes for an ambulance has increased by 50% in a year and nearly 230% since 2018-19. In 2018-19, the number of purple waits over 10 minutes – where the risk of cardiac arrest is greater than 10% - was 1,955. In 2019-20, the number was 3,281. In 2020-21, the number was 4,309 and in 2021-22, the number was 6,423. Even before the pandemic – between 2018-19 and 2019-20 – the number of purple waits increased by more than 1.5 times, or 68%. (FOI available on request).

Please see below for a full table of figures:

Ambulance response times by incident category

*number supplied as ‘>5’

(FOI available on request).

The target times for the different categories are as follows:

Purple - 8 minutes

Red - 8 minutes

Amber - 19 minutes

Yellow - 19 minutes

(SAS, New Clinical Responses Model Evaluation Report, 15 February 2019, link).