Ambulance service response times in Flintshire for December WORST on record

December’s Ambulance service performance figures show response times in Flintshire have slumped to their lowest point.

Category A’ incidents, those deemed to be life threatening have slipped to an ‘unacceptable level’ according to Welsh Ambulance Chief Executive Tracy Myhill.

Category A response times in Flintshire are once again amongst the slowest in the whole of Wales.

In December 786 ‘category A’ calls required an emergency response in Flintshire, 480 missed the 8 minutes target time set by NHS Wales

Just 38.9% of those in urgent need of an ambulance received one within eight minutes.

December’s performance figures are 26.1% behind the Wales target figure of 65% and show a slump of 10% versus December 2013.

There has also been a sharp spike in the number of category A calls arriving at scene on the 30 minutes mark or 47 people were left to wait 22 minutes longer than the 8 minutes target time set by NHS Wales 

Flintshire had the worst performing region out of the six area’s within the Betsi Cadwaladr health board region where the average across the six counties was 52.2% 

Overall Wales Ambulance response times in December it was just 42.6% down from 51.0% in November 2014 and from 57.6% from December 2013.

Tracy Myhill, Interim Chief Executive at the Welsh Ambulance Service, said:

“We completely appreciate that this presents an unacceptable level of service delivery across the whole health and social care system. There are a number of mitigating factors that we need to consider.

“Firstly, we took more than 40,000 calls in December, which is a record high for us and well above what we projected for that month.

“Secondly, when you break down our ‘Red’ calls into Red 1’s (immediately life-threatening, e.g. cardiac arrest) and Red 2’s (serious but less immediately time critical, e.g. suspected stroke), we performed much better on the higher acuity Red 1 calls (57.9%) than the Red 2 calls (40.6%).

“While this is still not where we’d like performance to be, it demonstrates that we are still reaching the majority of our most critically ill patients within eight minutes. The pressure across the unscheduled care system in December was immense.

“In order to support us to help you when you need us, if you’re not seriously ill or injured, please do not call 999 – consider your GP or pharmacist or a Minor Injuries Unit instead.

“Don’t forget about NHS Direct Wales which is available 24/7 for information and advice if you’re ill and are unsure what to do. Let’s keep our emergency ambulances for emergencies.”