The Manchester Evening News has obtained figures which reveal an alarming number of incidents in which North West ambulance crews took longer than two hours to attend emergency calls during the last year.
999 calls to the ambulance service are ranked into two categories at the time of the call based on the information received by call handlers. This ensures that life-threatening cases receive the quickest response.
“Red 1” and “Red 2” performance standards were introduced in 2013/14 with Red 1 cases being the most time critical, covering patients not breathing or with no pulse. Less immediately time critical are Red 2 cases, which includes strokes and fits.
The figures obtained by the Manchester Evening News give details of one particular call in January 2014 in Whitefield. The call was categorised as “Red 1” and immediately life-threatening. However, given these facts it took an ambulance crew a shocking 138 minutes to arrive at the scene because the call was initially listed under “falls” and therefore given a lower priority, because it was eventually upgraded to the most urgent classification. This case was just one of several “Red” calls in which ambulance crews took over an hour to get to patients.
Fiona Hedges, Medical Negligence Solicitor at Clear Law said: “These figures cause great cause for concern.
“It is quite frankly astounding that, for a life-threatening call it took over two hours for the ambulance to reach the scene and help the victim.
“As soon as a 999 call is made, the public need to feel safe in the knowledge that medical help will be with them quickly. Patient safety needs to be the number one priority at all times.”