Welsh Ambulance Service Chief offers unreserved apology to patients and families on the back of another damning Daily Mail report

Another day and yet another attack on the Welsh NHS by the Daily Mail, this time its the ambulance service that takes a kicking in what could be described as politically motivated attacks on the Welsh NHS and Government.

Under the headline “Deadly 999 shambles: The heartbreaking stories that reveal the life-or-death gamble of calling an ambulance in Wales” the Daily Mail has printed a damning article about Welsh Ambulance Service.

A Daily Mail ‘investigation’ into the Welsh NHS has led to astonishing set of articles being published this week with headlines such as “Meltdown in Labour-run Welsh NHS” largely designed to undermine the Labour party in Wales in the run up to the 2015 election.

The Government aren’t taking the attacks lying down though and have issued a highly in-depth rebuttal aimed at debunking many of the Daily Mail’s claims.

Today sees the Welsh Ambulance service under the spotlight with a list of tragic stories that most people in Wales will be very familiar with, the article has led to an unreserved apology being issued by the new interim Welsh Ambulance service boss Tracy Myhill.

In a statement on the Welsh Ambulance service website, Interim Chief Executive Tracy Myhill says ; 

“I want to make a full and unreserved apology to all those patients and families whose experience of our services has been unacceptable and give them my absolute assurance that, as Interim Chief Executive, I am committed to delivering the high quality ambulance service which the people of Wales need and deserve.

“We cannot undo what has happened in the past, but we can take steps to make sure that we learn from these experiences and make sure that the safe and prompt care of our patients is at the heart of what this organisation stands for. My door is always open and I’m happy to meet with any of the families referred to in this piece to discuss their concerns.

“While I accept that apologies of this kind can often ring hollow, it is important that the people of Wales know that our staff at the Welsh Ambulance Service are doing all they can to improve performance, and we have identified a number of actions that should help us to do this. We are also working closely with our colleagues in health boards across Wales to make the whole emergency care system work better.

“The issues we face are complex, which is why so much effort is going in to resolve them. While there are issues of geography and demand which are not easy to overcome, we also mustn’t lose sight of the fact that our staff save lives every day, work extremely hard in often difficult circumstances, and deserve support rather than condemnation.”

Ambulance response times in Flintshire have struggled for months to get anywhere near the NHS Wales 8 minute target response time for category A’ incidents, those deemed to be life threatening.

The latest set of figures show in August that 309 people in Flintshire who required emergency category A responses waited longer than the 8 minutes target time, this was out of 649 who required an emergency response.