Health officials under fire over Teesdale ambulance response times

HEALTH bosses have come under fire for ambulance response times in Teesdale amid a shake-up of emergency targets.

Campaigners from the Rural Ambulance Monitoring Group shared their grievances with health officials at County Hall last week as the service faces a change to its response time goals.

Figures released by the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) showed how an “improvement” in responses to the most serious “Red 1” callouts across the region had put the service close to their target.

However, the latest statistics from August indicated less than half of Red 1 calls in the Durham Dales were being met within the eight minute threshold – a response rate 20 per cent lower than the service area average.

Monitoring group member Joy Urwin feared Teesdale and Weardale had a much poorer response rate from “informed estimations”.

She added: “It is simply unacceptable.

“We know from anecdotal evidence we get from families – a lot of whom do not put complaints in to the ambulance service.

“Several members here have repeatedly requested figures for Weardale and Teesdale – why have these requests been denied? If we do not know what’s going on in rural areas we cannot even begin to put it right.”

The NEAS gets the lowest funding per head of population of any ambulance trust in the UK.

Durham County Council’s health scrutiny committee chairman, Cllr John Richardson, thought the region seemed to be getting “the edge of the middle of the sandwich” in terms of money.

However, the ambulance watchdog feared Teesdale and Weardale were even further behind. Watchdog member Margaret Dent said: “I do hope the new standards improve rural response times and I can see how that might happen.”

At the moment, if 75 per cent of “Red 1” calls are responded to in eight minutes then ambulance services are meeting their goal.

A national rejig of targets will see the average response time of the most serious calls needing to be seven minutes or less – with 90 per cent of all the top tier calls responded to in 15 minutes.

Mark Cotton, from NEAS, told the health committee rural response times in trials of the new scheme had seen better results in second tier callouts as ambulances were less likely to be diverted once on their way.

The Durham Dales area of the trust includes Bishop Auckland and Crook in its existing figures – something Cllr Richard Bell feared could mask Teesdale and Weardale’s response times.

Paul Liversedge, chief operating officer of NEAS, said: “We feel that the current performance information we are reporting on is to a level we are comfortable with.

“We would not want to go into any more detail because it gets to the point of patient information being identified – we want to avoid that and work with the ambulance monitoring group to be helpful.”

However, Cllr Bell wasn’t convinced by Mr Liversedge’s argument.

“I’ve heard that old chestnut about patient confidentiality and, quite frankly, I don’t believe it,” he said.

“Do you think if Mrs Miggins has a fall in Middleton I don’t know about it?

“Please do not hide behind detailed patient confidentiality.”

A more detailed breakdown of response times is set to be released by the NEAS in the coming weeks.

The new ambulance targets will be introduced in April next year.