Ambulance shortage hits response times (From Daily Echo)
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Ambulance shortage hits response times
8:16am Thursday 24th September 2009 in
HAMPSHIRE is so short of Ambulances it is affecting response times, research has shown.
In Hampshire, there are only 4.9 ambulances per 100,000 people.
That compares to 5.3 ambulances per 100,000 in the South Central Ambulance Service which covers Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
But the trust with the fastest response times in England and Wales is the South Western Ambulance Service which has 7.1 ambulances per 100,000.
Martin Tod, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Winchester, uncovered the information after making Freedom of Information requests to every ambulance trust in England and Wales.
Mr Tod discovered that the time it takes to reach people with life-threatening problems in Hampshire and the South Central region ambulance is being delayed by a lack of ambulances compared to the best performing areas.
He said: “To match the best performing parts of the country and help fix response times in rural areas, we need more ambulances.
“It’s not rocket science. If you look at the figures across the country, it’s clear that more ambulances help you get faster response times. The south west has seven ambulances for every 100,000 people. We have five. We’d need 86 more ambulances across the region to have the same level of coverage.”
The worst hit areas are rural ones like Winchester. Although the South Central region is close to reaching three-quarters of emergencies in eight minutes, in Winchester it’s only half. And in some rural areas, only one in 10 calls are reached in time.
The worst performing ward in the Winchester district is Cheriton and Bishops Sutton ward, where only 10.5per cent of life-threatening incidents are reached in eight minutes.
In the past 12 months, South Central Ambulance Service has improved the number of people with life-threatening reached within eight minutes from 61 per cent to 72.6per cent.
Trust chairman, Neil Goulden said: “To achieve all our targets we need more ambulances, more crews and more money.”
He said the funding mechanism does not take proper account of the cost of supporting rural areas – particularly populated rural areas like Hampshire compared to relatively unpopulated areas like Dartmoor.
Comments(15)
Stupideditor
says...
8:51am Thu 24 Sep 09
What is Mr Todd going to do to improve this lack of ambulances then, Donate an ambulance to the service? Unless he can do anything constructive then he should leave the emergency services alone. I think all 4 of them do a good job for poor pay and if our government are going to make cuts to frontline NHS staff then more people are going to be affected by lack of NHS staff including ambulance service.
Treble9
says...
9:12am Thu 24 Sep 09
Treble9
says...
9:37am Thu 24 Sep 09
ameliaT
says...
9:53am Thu 24 Sep 09
I cannot speak highly enough of the A and E Department or the Paramedics but all they could do was keep apologising for the delay.
Something needs to be done very urgently to sort this appalling situation out.
southy
says...
11:05am Thu 24 Sep 09
what they failed to tell you is that south western area has fewer ambulance, all down to the fact its less populated area.
what has not help them in repose times is the fact that they have closed down many of the mid way hospitals, like the one that use to be at ashurst or the one in totton and there are many more that been closed down just so the nhs trust can save money and put a part of this save money in there pockets, you know the type of people, those that work 3 or 4 days per mth and earn £20,000 and more. the nhs has been getting sick with in it self for the last 25 plus years, and it will take a good socialist government to put it right again
Lone Ranger
says...
11:31am Thu 24 Sep 09
southy wrote:But surely Southy the Ashurst or Totton hospitals were never used as A&E were they ?
"" South Western Ambulance Service which has 7.1 ambulances per 100,000 "" what they failed to tell you is that south western area has fewer ambulance, all down to the fact its less populated area. what has not help them in repose times is the fact that they have closed down many of the mid way hospitals, like the one that use to be at ashurst or the one in totton and there are many more that been closed down just so the nhs trust can save money and put a part of this save money in there pockets, you know the type of people, those that work 3 or 4 days per mth and earn £20,000 and more. the nhs has been getting sick with in it self for the last 25 plus years, and it will take a good socialist government to put it right again
southy
says...
11:50am Thu 24 Sep 09
Paramjit Bahia
says...
12:25pm Thu 24 Sep 09
End of the day we the people are paying for these services, so rightly expect reasonable response times.
If there are some problems with the way whole system works then it only proves that improvements in procedures are required. So rather than viewing attack upon workers in the service, the constructive criticism and genuine concerns should be used for fixing the inbuilt glitches of the whole system that provides our health care.
Treble9
says...
12:47pm Thu 24 Sep 09
Jerry Parsons
says...
12:49pm Thu 24 Sep 09
goard
says...
3:45pm Thu 24 Sep 09
goard
Stupideditor
says...
3:59pm Thu 24 Sep 09
goard wrote:What has the closure of an ambulance depot got to do with the dispatch of ambulances. Most of the time they get dispatched to jobs from the forecourts of A&E Hospitals or peoples addresses.
Case in point, daughter laying in hall transfixed in pain - ambulance came 2 and a quater hours later and friendly and kindly men said she was the first un-drunk urgent case. A and E excellent, daughter could hear drunken injured being controlled by staff, they were out of their minds. She remained in a ward but no attention because of 'stabbings' that night. Later told she would not have survived if she was sent home. Second Point: Ambulance not in operation - closed down - friend's baby crawled into gutter behind stationary parked truck - laid injured for two hours because ambulance Depot closed down - this was a few years ago but the family fought to regain a Depot but now again closed down. Yes, I look upon the powers that be as not really with the 'real world'. goard
As for treble nines comments regarding GP surgeys - he is right. I was at my GP surgery recently and they admitted a patient to a&e after he was driven to the surgery by his wife. He was walking and looked well.
Brite Spark
says...
9:42pm Thu 24 Sep 09
Iknowthings
says...
9:51pm Fri 9 Oct 09
We are the only country in the world with a public and free Ambulance service, the only country to set national performance targets and yet we all expect this for minimal taxes, complaining bitterly if these go up.
The ONLY time you see an Ambulance running on blue lights is when life is believed to be in danger,Police and Fire could be going to anything from a domestic argument to a cat up a tree, yet they never receive the level of criticism Hampshire press seem to delight in printing, and many residents seem to enjoy helping with.All in all, we get a pretty reasonable service from dedicated people with enough to deal with apart from articles like these, and a wannabe MP trying to drum up votes on information he gleaned at a public meeting, I notice he doesn't mention that they were third best performers in the country, wonder why not, harder to win votes maybe?Politics may be a dirty game, but so is life as a Public Servant.
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Stupideditor says...
8:43am Thu 24 Sep 09
Rubbish, When the A&E departments get clogged up ambulances like walking in patients have to wait. The more ambulance you have the more people waiting in the cue.
Also the more ambulances you have the more people will abuse them for waste of time jobs like swine flu and broken finger nails.
It's not about more ambulances it more about the public actually thinking about what they are calling for and thinking of other ways to get to hospital instead of the free taxi that is hampshire ambulance