AMBULANCE crews in Sussex wasted 16,000 hours of their time waiting to hand patients over at hospital A&E departments, figures show.

Paramedics are supposed to drop people off and get back on the road again within 15 minutes of arrival but some crews have found themselves waiting more than an hour.

The delays mean fewer crews are available to respond to calls, making it harder for South East Coast Ambulance Service (Secamb) to reach seriously ill patients fast enough.

This means the service is failing to meet national response targets.

The figure, revealed through a Freedom of Information Act request, covers an 18 month period and it is feared the situation will deteriorate as demand increases over the coming winter months.

A report to the latest Secamb board meeting said handover delays continued to be a significant issue for the trust, with 6,000 hours wasted in October across Sussex, Surrey and Kent compared to the planned 3,450.

October was 1,000 hours worse than September and the second worst month on record.

The problem is linked to cuts in social care and the rise in the number of bed-blocking patients who have to stay in hospital until a place in a nursing home is found for them or a package of support in their own home is arranged.

This is having a knock-on effect on hospital A&E departments who then struggle to find a bed for patients they need to admit and also means ambulance crews have to wait longer to hand new patients over.

Ambulance and hospital bosses, along with clinical commissioning groups, community trusts and councils say they are working to try to tackle the issue.

This has included sending ambulance managers into hospitals to oversee handovers and get crews back out on to the roads as soon as possible.

It was also revealed Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals and East Sussex Healthcare NHS trusts are to get additional bed capacity over the winter to help ease demand.

A Secamb spokesman said: “Handover delays at hospitals continue to be a significant issue for the trust across our whole region.

“The delays severely impact on our ability to respond to patients in the community as quickly as we would like.

“We are continuing to work closely with all hospitals in our region to address the problem as Secamb and the NHS as a whole continues to experience extremely high demand.”

A Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals spokesman said: “Like all hospitals across the country, the demand on our emergency services has increased significantly in recent years.

“As we have the busiest A&Es in the county, there are times when the handover of patients from ambulances arriving at the departments take longer than we would like and we are working closely with Secamb to help us to cope better with the growing demand.”