PATIENTS’ access to healthcare when they are in urgent need is “worsening” and improving services will be a “significant challenge” for the NHS, a damning report revealed today.

It comes at a time when more people than ever are seeking unplanned and urgent NHS care, according to the National Audit Office (NAO) study.

The report sets out a number of struggles patients face when trying to access urgent and emergency care, including a record hospital bed occupancy.

Between January and March, 93 per cent of hospital beds were filled on average, it warned.

And the average amount of time it took to answer 999 calls was 88 seconds in December compared to 14 seconds in March 2018.

More than 700,000 A&E patients waited more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged in December — another record.

In March, some 91,000 ambulance “handovers” took more than half an hour — equal to approximately a quarter of all handovers.

It comes amid soaring demand including record numbers seeking help from GPs, 111 and A&E services.

NAO authors acknowledge that the NHS published a two-year plan to recover services in July but point out that performance against operational targets has not been met since before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “In an emergency, patients don’t know whether an ambulance will arrive in time, if it comes at all.

“The longer we give the Conservatives, the longer patients will wait.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said it is working to achieve “one of the fastest and longest sustained improvements in emergency waiting times in NHS history.”