"Ambulance Crew"

In recent months my mother has been taken by ambulance to the A&E department at Whipps Cross Hospital. I have observed that the ambulance crew may have to wait for at least one hour in corridors until they are ‘officially’ received by the A&E staff. Once the crews have booked in and handed over any documentation to the A&E staff, and the patient has been transferred into a cubicle, thus releasing the ambulance trolley (or wheelchair), the ambulance crew can resume their duties. This procedure seems a waste of precious resources (on the day I was there, at one time five ambulance crews (10 people) were waiting at Whipps Cross before they could reclaim their trolleys / wheelchairs).

Is a possible solution for ambulance crews to retrieve another trolley / chair from a ‘bank’ of vacant ones kept nearby, and so become immediately operational once again? After the patient has been transferred onto a cubicle bed, the trolley / chair would replace the one taken from the ‘bank’.

I appreciate hospital A & E inflows are unpredictable, and the system presently appears overloaded, but would my suggestion provide an element of efficiency to the process?