South West Ambulance service failing to meet patients in good time

The South West’s ambulance service is still failing to get to the most critically ill patients in good time, according to figures released by NHS England.

For yet another month the service failed to hit targets for reaching Category 1 (C1) incidents – injured people at the highest risk.

When asked for a response, the service produced a statement almost identical to the one it released after last month’s poor performance figures. National targets say paramedics should get to C1 patients within seven minutes.

And although improving on its response times in March, figures recently released by NHS England for April show South West paramedics are still taking an average of more than eight minutes to reach C1 patients.

The South West service is among the worst in the country for C1 response times, with only the east midlands and north west services posting worse results. All ambulance services are struggling to keep up after the target for reaching critical patients was reduced from eight to seven minutes.

The South West service was failing to hit even the eight minute target before it was lowered. A service spokesman said: “South Western Ambulance Service has been working exceptionally hard to improve its performance. 

“We are continuing to demonstrate a week-on-week improvement in our response times for our most critical and seriously ill patients, and we have robust plans in place to continue this improvement across all categories of patients. 

“We will continue to work with our strategic partners to negotiate further resources to enable us to deliver the highest quality response to patients.”

Only four ambulance services hit the seven minute target in April, when the average response time for C1 cases across thge country was 7 minutes 38 seconds.