Freedom Central » Ambulances

Minister must take action on worsening ambulance response times

Freedom Central — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:10 +0000

The latest statistics on ambulance response times show that only 58.5% of emergency ambulance calls were responded to within the eight minute target. This is the second successive month that these figures have worsened.

Welsh Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Minister Peter Black said:

“It is disappointing to see yet another fall in performance on the part of the ambulance trust. Patients are continuing to be let down by the failure to respond to emergency calls within the target times and lives are being put at risk.

“I asked the Minister for Health during Ministerial Questions to tackle this problem urgently. She is in receipt of a review of the ambulance trust that recommends targeted additional investment to help it meet its targets but is refusing to put that money in to the pot.

“She also acknowledges the impact on response times of bottlenecks at accident and emergency departments and the shortage of acute beds, however these problems have been evident for some time and no progress appears to have been made in resolving them.

“The minister needs to knock heads together to get this sorted and quickly.”

The Health Minister is for turning

Freedom Central — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:54:00 +0000

On Wednesday 4 February the Assembly Government’s Health Minister was questioned on the appalling performance of the Ambulance Trust by Welsh Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Minister, Peter Black. He demanded to know why she had been sitting for over a year on two bids for capital investment that could make a huge difference to ambulance response times. Her answer was revealing:

Edwina Hart: I do not think that there is a budgetary issue with the ambulance trust. It is a question of the management of the service in many areas. I have invested the capital that has been requested of me by the ambulance trust—a great deal of additional capital has gone in over the years. The figures are dreadful, but it has also experienced a very difficult period, and we must acknowledge that those front-line staff have had a difficult time over the past few weeks. It is very easy to look at the figures and criticise, but at the end of the day, we are working with the trust to try to make improvements. I wish that the improvements were happening more quickly than they are, but I think that we will make progress over the next 12 months.

Under further questioning the Minister was even more adamant that she was not going to bale out the ambulance service with extra money:

As far as I am concerned, the ambulance trust has resources to make it function and it should get on and function.

It did not take her long to perform a u-turn. Yesterday the Minister announced that an extra £10.5m is being handed to the Welsh ambulance service by the assembly government to cut the time it takes to reach patients in emergencies. The cash will buy satellite navigation, location systems and mobile data terminals for all emergency ambulances.

Perhaps if she had not spent a year deliberating on the ambulance services bid and made her decision earlier then we would already have seen an improvement in response times. We will never know.

Urgent action needed to address poor Ambulance response times

Freedom Central — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:16:00 +0000

The Welsh Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson, Peter Black has called for urgent action by the Health Minister following the publication of the monthly response times for the Ambulance Service in Wales that shows a continuing deterioration in the service.

For the fourth month running, the response time for Ambulances arriving at a scene within the target eight minutes, has fallen from 60.9% in September to 57.1% in November to 47.6% in December. The All-Wales target is currently set at 65%.

Peter Black said: “This continuing failure of the Ambulance Service to reach its 65% target of arriving at a scene within eight minutes is a matter of huge concern. I understand that there were factors that impacted on these figures such as a flu epidemic and a novovirus outbreak in North Wales but nevertheless the Minister needs to start getting to grips with this issue.

“My concern is that the best efforts of a hard-working and dedicated staff are being foiled by factors outside their control. In particular there continue to be huge bottlenecks around Accident and Emergency departments which are holding up ambulances and preventing them responding to other calls.

“In addition much needed investment in the ambulance service has stalled with the Assembly Government. A bid put into WAG in January 2008 for £5 million to be spent on ambulance fleets has not yet been approved, over a year later. Another bid of £35 million submitted in May 2008 is also awaiting approval. We cannot expect the ambulance service to improve when they are operating with one hand tied behind their back as a result of government inaction.”

The December Statistics can be found here.