A PATIENT suffered a heart attack and died at Southend Hospital after waiting 13 hours in the now-defunct ambulance handover unit, a report leaked to the Echo says.

According to the incident report, the patient arrived at Southend Hospital via ambulance at in the early hours of December 13 and was placed in the hospital’s ambulance handover unit, which was dismantled in late January.

The report, seen by the Echo, reveals the patient was first seen by an emergency department more than 13 hours after their arrival.

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Later that evening, the patient suffered a cardiac arrest in the unit before being moved to resus - the area in A&E where people are taken if they need life-saving treatment immediately. 

They died a short while later.

“There has been a patient death after waiting 13 hours to be seen who was put in the unit against criteria it would seem,” a source told the Echo.

“This patient was in the wrong are and it has likely contributed to their death,” they added.

Hospital bosses say in investigation into the death is ongoing and processes are being reviewed.

Southend Hospital’s ambulance handover unit opened at the beginning of November.

The £250,000 unit created 12 extra bed spaces to allow ambulance crews to drop patients off and return to the road in an attempt to cut down excessively long delays.

However, the unit was quietly shut down at the end of January, after the Mid and South Essex NHS Trust - which runs Southend Hospital - reconfigured the emergency department, making space for seven more beds.

The units have been dismantled despite the fact that, in the last week of February, 43 per cent of patients arriving at Basildon, Southend and Broomfield hospitals waited at least half an hour to be transferred to A&E - way above the national average of 26 per cent.

A spokesperson for Mid and South Essex NHS Trust, said: “Our condolences go out to the family on the loss of their loved one, an investigation into the incident is currently taking place and processes have been reviewed.”