Work in Progress - Ambulance Handovers

An ambulance handover represents the process of moving a patient from an ambulance to an emergency department (ED) once the vehicle has arrived at a hospital. The timely completion of these handovers and minimising the time patients spend in ambulances outside hospitals is crucial to ensuring high standards of patient care and patient safety. However, in 2022-23 alone, over 100,000 ‘on the road’ hours were lost due to Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) ambulances missing handover time targets and having to wait outside emergency departments (EDs). 

This review will examine: 

• the performance of NIAS in recent years in respect of meeting key 15 minute and 30 minute handover / turnaround targets.
• the operational impact of delayed ambulance handovers, including the amount of operational time lost and financial cost of this, and the extent of risk to patient safety;
• the main causes of any poor ambulance handover performance, including issues around delayed hospital discharges;
• good practice around ambulance handovers which has demonstrably improved performance in the rest of the UK, and the progress to date in implementing this in Northern Ireland; and
• work undertaken internally to date by NIAS to try and improve handover performance, and the further progress which needs to be achieved in this regard. 

This report is scheduled to publish around February 2025.