Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department has conducted into the maximum time a patient should travel by road ambulance to the nearest hospital in an emergency.

NHS England does not offer guidance on maximum travel time by road ambulance to the nearest hospital.

NHS England is working hard with its partners to help develop ambulance services that act as mobile assessment and treatment services and to deliver a networked approach to urgent and emergency care services that ensures patients are treated in the facility best equipped to provide whatever care is needed. For some patients requiring specialist care, this may be in a hospital that is further away.

For patients who have suffered severe injuries in an accident, paramedics use triage tools at the scene to determine the likely injuries and best hospital for treatment. If the patient requires treatment in a Major Trauma Centre, the ambulance (or helicopter) can travel up to one hour, bypassing other hospitals en route, to take them directly to a Major Trauma Centre, each of which has a 24/7 trauma team immediately available.

A small number of patients are too sick to travel this long. These patients are transported to the nearest hospital that has facility to provide immediate life-saving interventions and, once stabilised, they have a second transfer to the Major Trauma Centre to receive definitive care. The major trauma system in England has been carefully and independently monitored since its national introduction in 2012 and has significantly increased the probability of survival for patients with severe injury.