One year of missing ambulance targets
Posted: June 26, 2013
Posted in: Medical Negligence
The Welsh ambulance service has failed to meet national targets for the 12th month running. The national response time target for life-threatening calls around the UK is eight minutes – the ambulance service in Wales has failed to meet this now for one whole year.
With a target in place that requires 65% of casualties to be reached in the eight-minute response target, only 62.5% were reached on time last month. Despite this not quite aligning with required standards, these statistics from May are up on April’s figures – suggesting minor improvements in the system.
Response time target missed in every local authority area
Putting the national response time target aside, 80% of calls were reached by ambulances in 12 minutes, and 94% in 20 minutes. These are not particularly poor statistics, bearing in mind that last month the 8-minute national response time target for life-threatening calls was missed in every local authority area.
Darren Millar, a conservative health spokesman, blames a combination of cuts and Labour’s plans to downgrade accident and emergency units for these “worrying” statistics. Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, Kirsty Williams, believes these figures to be “appalling” as Welsh targets are already 10% behind those in the rest of the UK. The fact that they continue to miss these “unambiguous” targets, she feels, is almost embarrassing.
It must be recognised that a slight improvement has been made on last month’s figures. However, the statistics of last month were so poor that maybe this difference cannot be termed an “improvement” at all.
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