PATIENTS were left in ambulances outside busy A&E departments in Bournemouth and Poole on more than 200 occasions last month.

The NHS has released statistics concerning Royal Bournemouth Hospital and Poole Hospital as part of a series highlighting the winter pressures facing the health service.

The figures show that in December, 93 of Bournemouth hospital's patients had to spend between half-an-hour and an hour waiting in an ambulance at hospital before they could be transferred to the emergency department.

And 25 were stuck in ambulances for more than 60 minutes.

NHS England's target time is up to 15 minutes.

At Poole Hospital 114 patients had to spend between half-an-hour and an hour waiting, and 18 were forced to wait for urgent care for more than an hour.

The waits, known as handover delays, can be due to ambulance queues or slow processing at hospitals, and can have the knock-on effect of delaying paramedics being despatched to future emergencies.

In total 6.8 per cent of all patients arriving by ambulances at Bournemouth were delayed by between 30 and 60 minutes, and 7.9 per cent of those arriving at Poole.

For both trusts the week between Christmas and the new year was the worst.

The Department of Health said ambulance crews should be able to hand patients over to A&E staff within the 15-minute target time.

It said not doing so increases the risk to patients due to delays in diagnosis and treatment, as well as the chance that a patient will get worse while waiting on a trolley.

The figures are likely to cause concern as doctors and hospital leaders have claimed the current NHS winter crisis is the worst in decades.

All non-urgent operations have been moved to after January 31 to free up beds and staff, and in some cases to later dates.

Emergency medicine consultant Dr Adrian Boyle, chairman for quality at the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: "Every type 1 emergency department that I know of is under serious and sustained pressure.

"It feels worse than the equivalent period last year.

"This means that ambulances are waiting outside emergency departments waiting to offload, the emergency departments are full, clinical staff are working extremely hard to try and look after these patients, often having to treat patients in corridors, people suffering lengthy delays.

"And we know that excessive crowding within emergency departments is associated with avoidable deaths."

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt apologised to patients for the wave of cancellations, saying it was "absolutely not what I want".

One paramedic said that for every patient waiting to be handed over at A&E, they know other patients in the community have rung 999 desperate for help. "Because of the real pressure the ambulance service is under at the moment, those patients are not getting the help they need and deserve within a timely manner."

He explained that pressure mounts further when paramedics finally attend these patients, as often their condition has deteriorated and some of them are "clearly very angry."

Another paramedic said it was not only A&E hold ups that were part of the problem.

"We simply don't have the alternative pathways that we used to," he said. "In the past we could leave some of the patients at home or refer them to other medical services around the county.

"Since many care in the community projects are no longer running, we end up taking them to A&E."

He also said colleagues were growing increasingly frustrated hearing that, on the one hand, more funding is needed, then on the other that millions of pounds of savings were also needed.

"Paramedics find it difficult to understand how this will help the situation," he said.