North East Ambulance Service 'failing to meet many of its response targets'

Critical incidents have been declared by ambulance services across the country as extreme pressure and the heatwave threaten to send emergency calls soaring this week.

Figures released this week show patients were already waiting far too long for ambulances in June, when the service handled more than 34,000 incidents.

That month, the most serious calls – where lives were in immediate danger – were responded to in an average of seven minutes 33 seconds, just over the NHS target of seven minutes.

But outside of that most critical category, statistics are more stark, with those needing rapid help for serious problems like strokes or chest pain waiting an average of 44 minutes.

That’s more than twice the NHS target of 18 minutes, while nine out of ten such ‘category two’ calls were dealt with within 1 hour 32 minutes.

For a third category of callers – those with urgent problems requiring hospital treatment and transport – 90 per cent of calls were responded to within 5 hours 52 mins - nearly four hours longer than the two hours stipulated in NHS rules.

NEAS medical director Matthew Beattie said staff were “pulling out all the stops” but the service was regularly seeing more daily calls than would have been received on their worst day of the year, pre-Covid.

He added: “Unfortunately, this means we’re simply not able to answer our calls or reach our patients as quickly as we would like and I would like to personally apologise for that.”

Ambulance service statistics show calls to NEAS have increased by thousands year on year since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Response times have also grown considerably since then – in June 2019-20, before the pandemic took hold, the average response time to the most life-threatening incidents was more than a minute shorter than in June this year.

For serious, ‘category two’ incidents, the average wait is now around 17 minutes longer than it was then, and for category three, it is around 43 minutes longer.

UNISON’s ambulance lead, Alan Lofthouse, said ambulance staff are facing unprecedented challenges, adding: “They know patients are being harmed by delays getting to calls while they queue outside hospitals.”

He warned more patients will suffer and more ambulance staff will leave the profession if Government ministers do not focus on improvements.

Donna Hay, NEAS strategic commander, said alert levels were elevated in response to sustained pressures that were expected to continue.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said £150 million in funding had been provided to ambulance services, with the number of ambulance and support staff increasing nationally by 40% since 2010.

He said the Government recognised the pressure services are under, adding: “The Minister of State will be engaging with ambulance trusts as soon as possible to hear their concerns and ensure we are working closely to support them.”