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Eight minute target for life or death ambulance calls is relaxed



The eight-minute target for ambulances to reach life-threatening emergencies is being relaxed in a trial that simply lets paramedics arrive as quickly as they can.

It means patients having heart attacks, strokes or seizures will not be guaranteed an ambulance within eight minutes.

Amid a record number of 999 calls and a severe shortage of paramedics, a report also urges ambulance services to hire more call-centre handlers to advise more patients over the phone, rather than dispatching emergency vehicles.

The response time trial is under way in three of the country's ten ambulance services – South West, West Midlands and Yorkshire, which serve a total of 16million patients – and could be extended nationally. But most of the public are unaware of it and it has only been highlighted today in a report by the National Audit Office.

It was gradually introduced in the three regions last year with no announcements, fuelling concerns that the public have been deliberately kept in the dark.

The report reveals that more than 10.7million calls were made to ambulance services in 2015/16, a 30 per cent rise in four years.

On top of this, ambulance services are facing a recruitment crisis, with as many as one in ten paramedic roles vacant.

This is having a severe impact on ambulance response times, and many severely ill patients have been left waiting more than an hour for an ambulance to arrive. The most serious calls – including cardiac arrests, breathing difficulties, heart attacks or strokes – are meant to get an ambulance within eight minutes.

In the trial, this is relaxed for the slightly less critical cases – known as Red 2 – which include heart attacks, strokes and seizures. These have been reclassified as Amber cases and there is no fixed time limit – paramedics are urged to respond as quickly as they can.

All Red 1 calls are sent an ambulance in eight minutes, including cardiac arrests – in which the heart stops, or for people who are struggling to breathe.

The trial will be assessed in spring and if deemed a success, will be introduced nationally. The report warns the eight-minute target encourages 999 operators to send 'multiple' ambulances or response cars to the same emergency, just to 'stop the clock'.