PATIENTS could be driven to other A&E units following continued concerns about waiting times at Colchester General Hospital.

Colchester General Hospital had the highest waiting times of Essex’s five NHS trusts In June.

Ambulance crew handovers of more than 30 minutes totalled 125 hours, and there were 67 cases were where patients waited more than an hour.

Patients should be transferred from ambulances within 15 minutes of arriving at A&E.

The ambulance service is looking at ways to cut waiting times, including having a liaison officer at the hospital and a new “intelligence conveyancing” scheme.

Activity will be monitored and if there is a surge in calls, ambulances will be diverted to a different hospital without the need for a conference call between the hospitals.

The closest hospitals are Ipswich, 22 miles away, and Broomfield, in Chelmsford, 25 miles away.

Dr Shane Gordon, chief operating officer at Colchester General Hospital, said: “We will be supporting the pilot.

“Hopefully, we will be able to pick up the handover times very quickly.

“Ninety per cent of people arriving by ambulance get seen within 15 minutes.”

A spokesman for the East of England Ambulance Service said senior managers are working closely with Colchester Hospital and other health colleagues to reduce handover delays, but details are still in the planning stage.

The number of emergency ambulances arriving at Colchester General Hospital in the three months from April this year was 9.7 per cent more than the equivalent quarter last year – 6,996 compared with 6,373.

In addition, the average number of people attending the emergency department has risen every month this year, increasing from a daily average of 187 in January to 232 in June.

The spokesman said there had been improvements in ambulance handover times since January, when there were 485 handovers taking more than 30 minutes, of which 311 took more than an hour.

Colchester General Hospital is trialling an alternative way of gathering ambulance handover data.

The pilot scheme sees the ambulance crews swipe a pad using a fob on their keyring when they hand patients over.