Welsh Ambulance Service Miss Response Time Target

The Welsh Ambulance Service have missed their target of attending life threatening incidents in eight minutes.

In figures released yesterday by the Welsh Government, a breakdown of ambulance response times for June have been revealed.

Across Wales there there were a total of 35,570 emergency calls made to the service. This is 2.7% down on May 2014 but 5.0% up on June 2013.

Of these calls, 14,167 were classed as Category A (immediately life-threatening) calls, which is 4.0% down on May 2014 but 6.3% up on June 2013.

From this, 53.0% of emergency responses to Category A (immediately life-threatening) calls arrived at the scene within 8 minutes – down from 54.1% in May 2014 and from 62.6% in June 2013 – and below the target of 65%.

These figures mean that the ambulance service have missed their target of attending 65% of life threatening calls in eight minutes.

A breakdown of figures per region is also provided, with 593 Category A calls made in Wrexham last month.

Of these calls 583 had first response attend the scene, with a total of 65.7% of incidents attended within eight minutes. These figures are ever so slightly above the response target.

A quick look at the figures suggests that Betsi Cadwaladr achieved the overall response time target across three areas, which are Wrexham, Denbighshire and Conwy.

However just up the road in Flintshire, figures show that 45.4% of Category A incidents were attended within eight minutes.

The report goes onto say that 58.2% of Category A calls received an emergency response within 9 minutes, 62.9% within 10 minutes, 79.7% within 15 minutes, 89.3% within 20 minutes and 96.7% within 30 minutes.

A full breakdown and report of the figures can be viewed here.