Welsh Ambulance Service on target again during second busiest month on record

The average emergency response from the Welsh Ambulance Service to a patient with an immediately life-threatening illness or injury was under six minutes in January 2016, new figures show.

The latest figures, which are published today, also that January 2016 was the second busiest month on record since the monthly series began 10 years ago.

In the fourth month of the year-long pilot to test changes to the way the Welsh Ambulance Service responds to emergency calls, 69.4% of red calls were responded to within eight minutes and almost 75% of calls received a response in nine minutes.

The expectation is that at least 65% of responses to the most life-threatening emergencies – known as red calls – should arrive within eight minutes. The target has been achieved for each of the four months since the pilot started in October 2015.

The figures for January 2016 show:

• The ambulance service received 39,659 emergency calls, an average of 1,279 per day; this is an increase of 2.3% on the daily average for December 2015
• Average daily calls have risen from under 1,000 a day in April 2006 to almost 1,300 a day in January 2016, an increase of 33%. January saw the second highest average number of daily calls since monthly records began in 2006
• There were 53 calls to the ambulance service on average every hour
• Despite the high level of demand, the average response time for red calls was just five minutes and 44 seconds
• More than a third of red calls received a response in just four minutes.

Deputy Health Minister, Vaughan Gething said:

“I’m encouraged to see the ambulance service has again exceeded the national response time target in January, despite the second highest level of demand since monthly reporting began 10 years ago. The vast majority of patients who needed an immediate response received one in less than eight minutes.

“The new clinical response model is providing faster responses to people who need an immediate intervention from our emergency ambulance crews.

“I am pleased to see the target was achieved in the Hywel Dda area in January. While the target was not achieved in Powys or Cwm Taf, more than 65% of red calls received a response in nine minutes in these areas. We will continue to seek improvements across Wales.”