How many ambulance trusts in uk

NHS ambulance trusts are under greater pressure than ever before following surge of calls Explained In July, more than one million calls were answered by NHS staff in England — a new record — as staff struggle to cope with overwhelming demand.

By Paul Gallagher Health Correspondent. September 3, am Updated am. Sign up to get Paul Waugh's daily politics email, with exclusive analysis every weekday evening Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing!

Sorry, there was a problem. Read More My father died because of paramedic staff shortages — the public should know about this worsening crisis. More from News. On Monday, across the West Midlands, 1, hours was lost by paramedics waiting outside hospitals, the equivalent of 90 hour shifts lost to delays. I know how frustrated you are by the situation and hopefully the measures outlined above will start to make a difference.

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Lastly, the changes mean that the service can dispatch the right vehicle first time and in cases such as strokes or cardiac arrests, can focus on taking patients to specialist hospitals so they can receive the best care. All these changes are aimed at providing a more effective and safer service overall for the public.

C1- Calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries. A time critical life threatening event requiring immediate intervention or resuscitation. An urgent problem not immediately life threatening that needs treatment to relieve suffering and transport or assessment and management at the scene with referral where needed within a clinically appropriate timeframe. Problems that are less urgent but require assessment and possibly transport within a clinically appropriate timeframe.

Since the introduction of the new standards, trusts have improved performance moving closer to the targets. Particular progress has been made in relation to category 1 calls. In January , six out of the 10 trusts exceeded the target for category 1 calls. Nationally, the average response time was mins — 8 seconds over the target. The average 90 th percentile response time was minutes; 2 minutes and 40 seconds quicker than the target. As shown in figure 1, national performance has been improving since the new standards were introduced.

The national average response time for category 2 was minutes in January Performance against the category 2 response times is more varied, with only two trusts exceeding the target. The difference between the shortest and longest response time is over 18 minutes — same as the average response time target for category 2.

Instead of being quick to criticise the ambulance service for current performance, we must be cognisant that it was always going to take time, investment and additional staff to deliver the quality standards across the board. Similarly to the rest of the health and care sector, the ambulance service has struggled due to large increases in demand, a lack of funding and widespread workforce shortages.

The service experiences higher levels of sickness absence than other services and ambulance staff are more likely to be physically assaulted or experience verbal abuse when working. Whilst demand, money and recruitment and retention challenges are in some way consistent across ambulance trusts, there are a range of factors that can impact the operational model and performance of an ambulance service.

There is variation in terms of:. One of the most challenging things for ambulance trusts in terms of planning and deployment of vehicles is when staff and vehicles are held up handing patients over to acute hospitals.