999 calls under spotlight

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Emergency ambulances in the borough have narrowly missed out on the fastest response times target for life-threatening call-outs, according to a new report by the The NHS Information Centre.

For Category A calls, classed as immediately life-threatening incidents, emergency response ambulances should arrive at the scene within eight minutes in 75 per cent of cases.

A fully-equipped ambulance, if required, should then attend within 19 minutes in 95 per cent of cases.

The North-West Ambulance Service (NWAS), which covers Rochdale, just missed out on the eight-minute target with 73 per cent of calls responded to within that time.

However, it did hit the 19-minute target, with 95.4 per cent of calls responded to with a fully-equipped ambulance.

Nationally, ambulance crews across the country averaged 74.3 per cent for the eight-minute target and 96.8 per cent for the 19- minute target. NWAS dealt with more than one million calls last year with 356,300 classed as Category A.

Of the 12 NHS organisations providing ambulance services, seven met or exceeded the 75 per cent standard for eight-minute response times, four exceeded 72 per cent and one over 70 per cent.

The new report showed ambulance services across the country were now dealing with hundreds of thousands more calls.

Tim Straughan, NHS Information Centre chief executive, said: “It appears roughly the same percentage of the most serious calls were responded to within the eight-minute target as in the previous year, although of course far more calls were dealt with.”

The full report can be viewed at www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/ambserv0910