IN the run-up to Christmas I heard any number of stories of patients having to wait for several hours in ambulances outside the hospital at Lancaster. The record was three hours and 45 minutes and ambulance staff tell me that two to three hours is not uncommon.

I know the staff at the hospital are doing everything they can to get patients into A&E and treated as quickly as possible but clearly there is a major resource issue at that hospital and there is a limit to how far they can stretch themselves. I have lost count of the number of times last year that the trust that runs the hospital has sent out a message asking people not to go to the hospital if they can possibly avoid it.

This really is not a way to run a health service.

The government is talking about ways to ensure that we can get to see our GP more easily if we are ill and it is claimed that about 30 per cent of people who turn up at A&E don’t really need to but the fact remains that the numbers turning up increase every year. An ambulance waiting outside a hospital is an ambulance that is not picking up a patient from Kendal or Grange and taking them to hospital. I heard tell of someone who had to wait two hours for an ambulance not so long ago and the one that turned up came from Durham to take them to Lancaster.

It seems to me that a relatively straightforward action to help the situation would be for the current Primary Care Assessment Service at the hospital in Kendal to be upgraded to an Urgent Care Centre.

Staff at the hospital in Kendal estimate that about one per cent of ambulances on call in the area drop off patients with them and they can only do so between 8.30 in the morning and 10 at night. Upgrading the service in Kendal would dramatically increase this number. It would mean that Lancaster can focus on the really serious issues and that ambulances can spend more time out on the road picking up sick people. Not wasting their time in queues.

Of course it would be wonderful to have a fully functioning A&E unit at the hospital in Kendal but we have to be realistic about the levels of expenditure we can expect given the squeeze on government expenditure that we are all witnessing.

I don’t even think doing this would cost a great deal. One way to introduce it would be for the existing Primary Care Assessment Service to work with the existing out-of-hours GP service more formally to deliver 24-hour doctor cover at the hospital.

I was really pleased to learn that even the local ambulance staff have announced that they support this plan.

But if we are to make this happen we need as many people as possible to get behind the plan. If you think this is a good idea then please do sign my petition. Just go to timfarron.co.uk/urgentcarecentre.