Ambulance response times

[sclements@camdd.co.uk]

I thought DENizens would be interested to read this article which was published in The Times, Tuesday October 10th 2000 :
 
Ambulance shake-up has slowed 999 times 
By a Correspondant

Ambulance service response times to 999 calls have fallen below government targets and vary widely across the country, according to a report published today. 

Experts have said that 3,000 more heart attack victims could be saved each year if 90 per cent of 999 calls were answered in eight minutes. Response times have instead worsened in the past five years despite the introduction of prioritisation systems intended to ensure that the most serious accidents are attended to first. Senior ambulance service officials condemned the report, published in Health
Which? magazine, as alarmist, and claim that it is based on out-of-date figures. 

Just one regional ambulance service has achieved a government target stating that by 2001 75 per cent of immediately life-threatening calls should be reached within eight minutes. Staffordshire Ambulance Service responded to 87.4 per cent of those calls within the time.  A third of the 33 ambulance services in the UK reach less than 60 per cent of urgent 999 calls within eight minutes. The London Ambulance Service came bottom of the league, responding to just 35.8 per cent of emergency calls within eight minutes. 
The report was based on Department of Health statistics for 999 response times. 

New standards set down by the Government in 1997 stated that by next year, all ambulance services must have introduced a prioritisation system to sort calls and ensure that the most serious incidents are answered first. 
Previously, all calls were treated with the same urgency, from minor scrapes to major disasters. Prioritisation classifies calls as category A - immediately life-threatening - and all others as category B.  The new targets mean that by 2001, 75 per cent of category A calls should be answered within eight minutes and 95 per cent of category B calls should be answered within 14 minutes in urban areas and 19 minutes in rural areas. Different standards have been set for Scotland and Wales. 
Response times by some services have worsened despite the new systems. Dorset Ambulance Service answered 57.7 per cent of category A calls within eight minutes in 1999, compared with 60 per cent in 1998. 

Sue Freeman, managing editor of Which Health?, said: Our analysis of the most up-to-date figures shows that ambulance services still have a long way to go. What is even more worrying is that response times in some areas are actually deteriorating.  We welcome call prioritisation but it must ensure that the most seriously ill patients get treated first. 

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that an extra £21 million was invested earlier this year in an attempt to help ambulance services to make vital improvements needed to ensure faster emergency response times. Getting 999 emergency ambulances to patients in time to make a real difference is a key priority for the Government, the spokesman said, adding that the number of 999 calls from the public had risen by 30 per cent in the past five years.  

Ambulance services attacked the report as unnecessarily alarmist, claiming that the figures it used, despite being the latest available, did not reflect the current picture.

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