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Ambulance Service Faces £5m Penalty

Monday 18th April 2011

We've been told today that it is 'highly likely' that a £5m penalty will be applied to East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) after it failed to meet national response requirements throughout the last financial year.

NHS Derbyshire County
, which oversees the performance of the service, has confirmed that the fine will be applied in line with national rules that say that penalties must be levied if the targets aren't met. However, they have stated that the cash will be ploughed back into EMAS to support performance improvement.

Standards agreed nationally say that 75% of Category A calls (ie heart attack or severely bleeding patients) should be responded to within 8 minutes and 95% of Category B calls (serious conditions needing a quick response) responded to within 19 minutes.

Across the country ambulance services have found the response standards challenging and over half of ambulance services are also likely to miss Category A response requirements and almost all are set to miss the Category B standard.

Martin Whittle, Director of Corporate Strategy, said: "Getting to patients quickly is crucial for ambulances and action must be taken to improve response times. These measures have been put in place to ensure that patients receive high quality care as swiftly as possible.

"It is important that we recognise that EMAS may not achieve the standards required but we are investing into the organisation to support all the measures being taken to address the under-performance. We can assure patients across the East Midlands that we will be working closely with EMAS to ensure that every penny that is reinvested will be used to drive up performance and improve services."

Eleven new Clinical Quality Indicators for England's ambulance services have been introduced from 1st April 2011 to replace the national Category B 19 minute response time measure. The Category A requirement continues unaltered. But for non-life threatening calls, ambulance services will not only be measured on the response time but also on how patients are treated and the outcomes of the treatment.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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