If you called an ambulance last month you probably faced quite a long wait. Figures released this morning show the average time for an ambulance to arrive after a ‘category two’ call-out was 51 minutes, only slightly down from 61 minutes in March. This is still nearly three times longer than the 18 minute target for category two emergency calls, which include serious conditions such as strokes or chest pain.
Pressure is mounting within hospitals too, with 12 hour A&E waits reaching a new high: one in 20 patients now have to wait half a day or more for treatment after arriving at hospital.
Category one emergency calls – where there is an ‘immediate threat to life’ – such as cardiac arrest had an average response time of nine minutes. Ten per cent of such calls took 16 minutes or longer. The target is to respond to 90 per cent of calls within 15 minutes.
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