By Pat Flanagan
The Mirror
DUBLIN, Ireland — Ambulance workers must respond to life-threatening emergencies such as heart attacks within eight minutes, they were told yesterday.
For the first time here, paramedics will have to publicly report the time it takes them to reach patients with potentially fatal conditions.
The Health Information and Quality Authority said ambulance staff are expected to act on the new targets imme-diately with monitoring to begin later this year.
Jon Billings, director of the health service watchdog, added: “Historically, the absence of such a system in Ireland has been a major gap in what is needed for a safe, good quality emergency response service.”
Hiqa said it initially wanted to see trained paramedics on the scene of lifethreatening cases, including cardiac or respiratory arrest, within the eight-minute deadline in at least three quarters of all call-outs. The targets are expected to require an overhaul in how ambulance services are organised.
Once the HSE has brought in the necessary changes it will be expected to show yearly improvements in response times.
Mr Billings added: “A timely pre-hospital emergency team response to acute medical events, such as patients suffering from heart attacks, is known to improve the outcomes for patients.
“Experience in other jurisdictions shows that putting in place approaches to achieve these targets requires ambulance services to review how they provide the overall service and can result in widespread improvements in emergency care.”
A HSE performance report last October showed just 27% of all emergency ambulance call-outs were responded to within eight minutes and around 57% of cases took up to 14 minutes to reach.
Hiqa said the reorganisation of ambulance services to prioritise the most serious cases may mean patients with non-life threatening conditions will have to wait longer for an on-the-scene response.
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