By Caroline Jones
Derby Evening Telegraph
DERBY, England — East Midlands Ambulance Service looks set to be fined about £5 million for failing to reach patients quickly enough.
December’s cold weather and an increase in the number of call-outs over the same period put extra pressure on response times.
As a result, a report has predicted the ambulance service is “unlikely” to hit its annual government target to respond to 75% of life-threatening calls, known as category-A, within eight minutes.
The report said it would also struggle to meet its requirement for responding to category-B calls. These are serious but not life-threatening incident. It must reach 95% of them in 19 minutes.
Both targets cover the period between April and the end of March.
The report has been compiled by NHS Derbyshire County Primary Care Trust, which oversees the ambulance service’s performance for the region.
In its report, the trust said: “There were sanctions within the contract with EMAS that the primary care trust could levy against them for not achieving both of these targets and, in consultation with colleagues, the PCT had decided to do this.
“It was understood that this would be in the region of £5 million.”
Last year, NHS Derbyshire County considered fining the ambulance service when it failed to meet the same targets between April 2009 and March 2010.
Again, snow and ice resulted in more people falling ill or being injured and treacherous conditions on the roads meant ambulances were slower reaching patients.
The service reached 73.7% of its life-threatening calls in eight minutes and 94.5% of serious calls in 19 minutes.
But NHS Derbyshire County decided not to impose the fine because of the “exceptional circumstances” that ambulance staff faced during the winter.
It is not yet known where the percentages currently stand for the ambulance service between April 2010 and March 2011.
Both the ambulance service and NHS Derbyshire County have refused to comment on the issue until the yearly performance targets are confirmed at the end of the month.
After this month, the ambulance service will no longer have to respond to serious calls within 19 minutes. Changes by the Department of Health mean the national target time for category-B calls will be replaced with what are described as “clinical quality indicators”.
The department said the new system would “improve the quality and safety of care by focusing on patients with the greatest clinical need, rather than according to the categorisation of the call.”
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