Ambulance Service response “literally one in two chance” of having red call responded to inside target

The First Minister and the Leader of the Welsh Conservatives Andrew Davies MS have clashed this afternoon over the latest performance data for the Welsh Ambulance Service.

Mr Davies laid the issue at the door of the First Minister during FMQs as it is “something that he is responsible for and his Government is responsible for”, he also raised cases of covert recordings that revealed some staff members had been put on disciplinary pathways for raising reasonable concerns.

In Wales the call categories and targets for ambulance response times are:

• Red: Immediately life-threatening (someone is in imminent danger of death, such as a cardiac arrest). There is an all-Wales target for 65 per cent of these calls to have a response within 8 minutes.
• Amber: Serious, but not immediately life-threatening (patients who will often need treatment to be delivered on the scene, and may then need to be taken to hospital). These calls will include most medical and trauma cases, such as cardiac chest pains, stroke or fracture. There is no time-based target for amber calls.
• Green: Non urgent (can often be managed by other health services and clinical telephone assessment). These will include fainting (recovered and alert), minor injuries or earache. There is no official time based target for these calls.

The latest data was published on the 24th, that noted 55% of red calls arrived within 8 minutes in February 2022 – as graphed above.

Only 22.6% of amber call patients – which include strokes – were reached within 30 minutes.

The median – middle point – of all times is below, with 7.38mins the latest data point.

Other data is also given on the latest emergency department attendances:

The data was referenced by Andrew Davies MS, who asked, “Ambulance response times here in Wales, which we had last week where, on the red-alert calls, you had a literally one in two chance of having that call responded to.

“On amber calls, you’ve got a less than one in five chance of that being responded to in the 30-minute target time.

“Sixty-five per cent of red calls should hit that eight-minute response time. As I said, you’ve got a 50:50 chance now in Wales, regrettably, of having that happening.”

“First Minister, some time ago, the health Minister, Eluned Morgan, said you were investing in the ambulance service and this investment was paying real dividends. On those figures, clearly, these dividends aren’t coming through. When are we going to see the improvements that the people of Wales deserve?”

The First Minister Mark Drakeford replied, “Well for 48 weeks in a row, until the pandemic hit us in March 2020, the ambulance service in Wales met its targets. I don’t recall ever once being asked by the leader of the opposition about it then.

“The truth of the matter is, as he will know, that the pandemic has caused major challenges for the ambulance service, because every time an ambulance goes out and may transport somebody who has COVID, and with current rates of COVID in Wales, that means a very significant number of people who the ambulance service has to deal with, then the ambulance has to be deep cleaned again before it can go back on the road.”

“The figures for the last month show the ambulance service holding its own in Wales, despite the fact that the number of calls to the service has been running at all-time record highs over this winter. The Minister was right when she pointed to the investment that is going into the ambulance service, particularly in the recruitment of new staff. New staff are joining the ambulance service all the time, and there are more staff being recruited to help provide the service that people in Wales deserve to have.”

“Now, there’s still a way to go in achieving that, there’s no doubt at all about that, but the investment on the one hand, the staff of the other and, hopefully, an ability to move beyond the pandemic add up to a prospectus where the ambulance service will be able to return to the years of success that it enjoyed before the pandemic hit.”

Andrew Davies MS came back, “First Minister, it’s been 18 months since the targets have been hit by the ambulance service, and time and time again, I’ve raised it with you, Members across the political divide have raised issues—heart-wrenching issues—of their experiences across the whole of Wales, where regrettably ambulances haven’t been able to respond to life-threatening situations.

“We know the ambulance service has been supported by the military on several occasions—across the United Kingdom that support has been offered, I might add, not just here in Wales. That support is coming to an end come 31 March. What measures has the Welsh Government along with the ambulance service put in place to make sure that we don’t end up with a cliff edge on 31 March, and ultimately these figures deteriorate even worse than they are now?”

The First Minister replied, “Can I first just put on record our thanks to the military for the help that we have had here in Wales during the pandemic, and particularly as the leader of the opposition has said for the help that we have received from them in supporting our ambulance services, both in driving ambulances and in helping with the cleaning of ambulances so that they can be turned around as quickly as we can and put them back on the road again?

“It is inevitable that that help must come to an end, and there are many other calls, as we know, at the moment on the services of the military.

“What the Welsh Government has been doing is to invest in new, permanent, full-time members of staff, trained to the level where they’re able to carry out all the duties that you would expect the ambulance service to be able to undertake. And at the same time, more broadly, the Welsh Government has been supporting the ambulance service in a two-week reset of the service in the first half of this month.

“Now, the results of that reset are still being analysed. I’m pleased to say that over the last two weeks we’ve seen a 10 per cent reduction in the daily average ambulance hours lost compared to the two weeks before the reset was established, and I think that gives us some optimism that we are creating the platform that will allow the ambulance service to deal with the diminution in the number of people available to it as military help is withdrawn.”

The exchange went on with Andrew Davies MS saying, “As we heard last week in media reports, ambulance workers are telling us that, really, it is a soul-destroying job that they’re facing at the moment, and many, sadly, are having to revert to anti-depressants to get them through the day.

“From covert recordings we heard that from a management level, where genuine concerns are being raised, people are being put on pathways to disciplinary measures against them. That cannot be right, First Minister? I hope you’ll agree with me that that cannot be tolerated in a public organisation anywhere in Wales.

“These staff are under huge amounts of pressure. I’m grateful for you indicating the additional staff that are coming forward from recent recruitment drives, but what assurances can you give the Senedd, what assurances can you give ambulance workers, and what assurances can you give the people of Wales that in the coming weeks and months we will see genuine improvement in the response times of the ambulance service across Wales, and that these figures will start to improve and that through the course of the summer the target times that your own Government has set the service will be met?”

The First Minister replied, “The assurance that I can give to Members of the Senedd and people more broadly is this: that the ambulance trust is doing everything it can with its partners in the health service more generally to provide the service that its staff want to provide, and the investment of the Welsh Government is there to support them in that endeavour.”