North East Ambulance Service miss some response targets - but are doing better

Ambulances in the North East partly missed their response time targets in January but did improve on the record lows seen in December.

In January, 71.1% of Category A Red 1 calls, the highest priority blue light calls arrived within 8 minutes - falling short of the 75% target.

But the Category A Red 2 calls, which covers all other emergency ambulance calls, saw 75.2% arriving within 8 minutes, meeting the 75% target.

The North East Ambulance Service Foundation Trust responses were better than in December, when 62.4% of Red 1 call responses arrived within eight minutes and 66.4% of Red 2 calls made the target.

Paul Liversidge, NEAS chief operating officer, said: “We are pleased to have improved our response times to patients over the past 2 months but we acknowledge there are improvements still to be made.”

He said the trust was fourth overall nationally in reaching the Red 2 patients within eight minutes in January while the overall response rate for the month was just below the national target at 74.9%.

Mr Liversidge said part of the problem was a change in the Red 1 category service which came into effect in October which means the figures now include patients potentially at risk of cardiac arrest as well as those who were already in cardiac arrest.

He said: “Our Red 1 response performance began deteriorating after this point.”

Mr Liversidge added that the number of incidents fell in January compared to December, but the service was still seeing an increase in activity, attending over 1,500 more incidents in January, compared to the same period in 2014 – an increase of 9%.

Reviews are under way to identify ways of improve the responses, but he added: “Patients can help us by only calling 999 for life-threatening emergencies.”

The standard for ambulance services is to send an emergency response, with a defibrillator, within 8 minutes, to 75% of Category A calls.

Nationally in January 2015, 71.4% of Category A Red 1 calls in England arrived within 8 minutes. For Category A Red 2 calls, 68% arrived within 8 minutes.