- 27/10/2016
- Posted by: Mike Hedges MS
- Category: Press Releases
Best ambulance performance in a year
Mike Hedges AM welcomes the improved ambulance response times for emergencies where almost 80% of emergency calls for an ambulance received a response on scene within eight minutes in September. These are extremely good figures. The new clinical response model is prioritising the most urgent calls and ensuring a rapid response where it’s needed most.
The ambulance response time target was met every month in the first year of the clinical response model pilot, with half of emergency calls in September receiving a response in just over four and a half minutes.
Every health board in Wales met the target for the fourth consecutive month, which saw 79.5% of life-threatening calls, known as Red calls, receive a response within eight minutes, an increase of 1.4 percentage points on the previous month. The target is for 65% of Red calls to receive a response within eight minutes.
Health Secretary Vaughan Gething said:
“The Scottish Ambulance Service recently announced they would pilot a response system very similar to the Welsh model because they can see that this approach improves the quality of patient care. We have also had international interest in our approach.
“Ambulance service staff have worked extremely hard to deliver a service that ensures that every person who calls receives an appropriate response and I want to thank them for their hard work.”
The latest ambulance quality indicator information shows the average response time to amber patients, those with serious, but not immediately life threatening injuries or conditions was just 13 minutes and 23 seconds.
