999 response times missing targets

Ambulance services are taking too long to respond to life-threatening emergencies, according to a new report.

Five of the country’s 12 NHS ambulance trusts, including the North West trust which serves Greater Manchester, is failing to meet its targets of reaching 75% of the most serious and in-need patients within eight minutes.

The worst performing trust for category A responses was Great Western, only achieving 68.4%. North West ambulance service ranked forth achieving a 74.3%.

The region’s trust also failed to hit the targets to arrive at the scene of 95% of serious but not immediately life-threatening incidents within 19 minutes. It achieved an 87.6% rate. These figures cannot be compared directly with previous years because a stricter standard for measuring ambulance response times came into force in April 2008.

Previously response times were measured from the point where a series of details were recorded by the control room, such as exact location and nature of the incident, to when the response arrived on the scene.

The new response times are now measured from the point where the call is received at the control room switchboard to when the response arrives on scene.

NHS information centre chief executive Tim Straughan said: “More calls were received than last year, emergency response vehicles attended more incidents than last year, and ambulance crews took more emergency and urgent patients to hospital than in any other year in the past decade.”