Ambulance Waiting Times — House of Commons, 2016-10-17
Topic: Health
Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to address the Chamber under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is also a pleasure to see in his place my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Health, who is a very able Minister My speech is not an attack on the Government per se. It is my job as the MP for South Dorset to stand up and speak for people without fear or favour. In my six years as MP, I have seen the ambulance service increasingly struggle, and I hope that any information that I impart will lead to the improvement of the service I pay tribute to the men and women of the ambulance service, whose professionalism, dedication and selflessness have saved countless lives. People’s ability to dial 999 in an emergency in the expectation of receiving urgent and expert medical help has long been one of the NHS’s treasures. Now, it is the ambulance service itself that is facing an emergency. In the year to May 2016, ambulance response times hit a record low. Not a single one of the 10 ambulance trusts in England met the target of reaching 75% of incidents within eight minutes. Worryingly, the current national average for a response within eight minutes is 68%. This trend has grown over the past four years, which is the period for which the Government have published response figures Ambulance control rooms across the country are buckling under the twin strains of increased demand and dwindling resources. The increased demand is undeniable. Last year set a new record, with 10.8 million ambulance call-outs in 12 months—a staggering number. The London control room alone now fields 5,000 calls for ambulances every single day The numbers show that emergency calls for ambulances have risen by 6% year on year for 10 years. This has not been helped by the fact that people are finding it harder to see their GP, meaning that they fall back on A&E. Although we can debate the causes, the fact remains that there are simply not enough vehicles, paramedics and clinicians to cope with the increase in workload. At the same time, the resources available have been cut or frozen. Six of the 10 English ambulance service trusts are currently in deficit, having overspent their budget, despite making efficiencies. East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust alone had a £12 million deficit last year In my constituency, efficiency savings have directly affected the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, which I shall refer to from now on as the trust. An ambulance call-out in the trust now costs 2.5% less than last year. The trust covers Bath and north-east Somerset, Bristol, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire, Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire—a huge predominantly rural land mass covering 20% of England. I highlight the trust’s area of responsibility because it is the most rural of all the ambulance trusts and the area is one of the most sparsely populated, which means longer distances, higher fuel costs, patients who are harder to locate and hospitals that are more spread out. This means that ambulances need to be parked at intervals across the region, as I see all the time Achieving response times and meeting budget targets under such circumstances is a challenge. It is not just the increased demand and reduced resources that are creating the problems; the target culture does not help. Though well intended, targets can skew both priorities and outcomes. For example, to meet target times, a fast-response paramedic on a motorbike or in a car might be sent to a critical incident that would almost certainly require ambulance transportation to hospital. Those red-category incidents include life-threatening emergencies such as cardiac arrest, where survival depends on swift and specific action. Sending the wrong resource in such a case might well tick the target box on response times, but the eventual outcome might not be so satisfactory. For example, if responders reach a patient only one second short of the eight minutes, it is considered a success, even if that patient dies.