By Barry Nelson
The Northern Echo
YORKSHIRE, England — An under-fire ambulance service has insisted it is improving, despite figures which show it is failing to hit national targets for life-threatening calls.
The latest performance figures for England’s 12 ambulance services puts Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) bottom of the list when it comes to getting an ambulance to an emergency incident within eight minutes.
By contrast, the North-East Ambulance Service (NEAS), which provides 999 cover from Teesside to Berwick, exceeded the national target.
NEAS ambulances got to category A life-threatening call-outs within the time limit in 75.4 per cent of incidents.
The YAS hit the target in only 70.8 per cent of category A life-threatening call-outs, the poorest performance in England.
But last night, YAS bosses said that by the end of last month, the year to year performance for category A calls showed that the service was now meeting the national target of getting 75 per cent of 999 crews to the scene of a life-threatening incident within eight minutes.
In March, YAS was warned by the Care Quality Commission it must make “urgent improvements” to services or risk having its licence withdrawn.
The YAS has been told it must ensure that by October 31 it is responding to life-threatening and serious emergencies in line with national targets.
Simon Worthington, acting chief executive of YAS, said: “Improvements in performance have been made and year on year we are reaching patients more quickly than before. We remain committed to making further improvements.”
Mr Worthington said improvements had been achieved despite a six per cent increase in demand during the past year.
YAS responded to 710,916 urgent and emergency calls during 2009-10, nearly 40,000 more than the previous year.
The NEAS took nearly 432,000 emergency calls in 2009-10, 27,000 more than in the previous year.
For category B call-outs - serious but not immediately life-threatening - where the national target is for 95 per cent of ambulances to get to the scene of incidents within 19 minutes, the NEAS reached 94 per cent of call-outs within the time set. The YAS got to the scene in 91.1 per cent of call-outs.
Copyright 2010 Newsquest (North East) Limited