Joyce Watson, Assembly Member for Mid and West Wales, is writing to local health boards for reassurances that hospital turnarounds for ambulance staff will be reduced.
Joyce has been told by Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust that the number of hours lost to handovers of over 20 minutes - between ambulance and hospital staff - in December was more than double the amount in December 2006.
She asked for this information after one of her constituents, a former ambulance worker from Carmarthenshire, alerted her to the issue.
The trust has blamed a variety of factors on its poor performance in December with 47.6 per cent of Category A (the highest-risk) calls receiving a response within the eight-minute target, down nearly 10 per cent on the previous month and a long-way short of the 65 per cent target set by the Assembly Government in April.
These factors included an increase in incidents caused by the flu virus (which affected hospital turnarounds) and staff shortages.
The trust, which said that performance in January has improved, has also said that it has introduced a number of measures including liaising with the local health boards.
Joyce said: "I am confident that the service is doing all it can to improve response times. However, it is unacceptable that these crews cannot get to emergency calls quick enough because there is essentially a queue at the hospitals.
"I will be writing to health boards to get reassurances that measures are in place to deal with this. I will also ask the ambulance service to give me regular reports on time lost in this way."
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