Ambulance handover times have halved at Sheffield hospital 

The time it takes for paramedics to hand over a patient to A&E teams has reduced in hospitals across South Yorkshire. 

The report, from Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust (YAS), compares handover times from April 2024 to March 2025, to the end of 2025. 

• Sheffield Northern General Hospital - Was 35 minutes and 20 seconds, now 17 minutes and 50 seconds

• Sheffield Children’s Hospital - Was 11 minutes and 14 seconds, now nine minutes and 13 seconds

• Doncaster Royal Infirmary - Was 30 minutes and five seconds, now 17 minutes and 44 seconds

• Rotherham District General Hospital - Was 23 minutes and 57 seconds, now 16 minutes and 13 seconds

• Barnsley District Hospital - Was 21 minutes and 53 seconds, now 18 minutes and 22 seconds 

Despite these reductions, the report says the national standard for patient handovers at Emergency Departments is 15 minutes.

The report says: “Pressures across the health and social care system contribute to the hospital handover delays, and it remains a Trust priority to minimise these delays, given the impact this has on the availability of emergency ambulances and on patient care.

“Significant progress has been made in reducing handover delays across Yorkshire, with the introduction of the ‘transfer of care’ operating procedure (also known as W45).”

Under this protocol, ambulance staff are allowed to leave after 45 minutes if a hospital handover has not been successfully completed.

The report adds: “This is a structured, safe, and timely process for transferring patient care from YAS staff to acute trust colleagues.

“This has been developed to ensure patient handover takes place within a maximum of 45 minutes and helps to support timely patient handovers, which in turn supports rapid ambulance turnaround and preserves emergency response capacity.

“The overarching aim is to reduce the risk to patients waiting for a 999 response in our communities, therefore improving response times and maximising patient safety and experience.”

Credit: Local Democracy Reporting Service