Ambulance service under pressure

The ambulance service says demand has risen since the autumn

Ambulance staff in the region have been dealing with a major increase in calls.

In November last year, the North East Ambulance Service received 1,500 more calls than the year before.

It meant response times were affected and instead of 75% of life-threatening call-outs being attended within eight minutes, the figure dropped to 72.6%

One of the areas worst affected was Durham and Chester-le-Street where they achieved 60% against a target of 66%. But so far this year, it has risen to 70%.

North East Ambulance Service chief executive Simon Featherstone said there had been problems with inappropriate use of the service.

He said: "Demand has been increasing ever since the autumn of last year.

Under pressure

"We are not alone in that. Demand on the NHS Direct telephone helpline and urgent admissions to hospital have been going up by a similar amount as well.

"We have to do some work on really getting under the skin of why this demand is increasing.

"The issue for ambulance services and accident and emergency departments in particular is that we are always there 24-hours a day, seven days a week. When people can't get help from any other source that is their backstop."

Mr Featherstone said their service had not deteriorated but they had been put under pressure.

Inappropriate use

He said: "There has been a suggestion for many years that patients' access services inappropriately and we tend in the NHS to blame the patient and that is totally the wrong way to approach these issues.

"What we need to do is divert patient need to the most appropriate response"

But he said there were times when patients tried to use the service inappropriately.

He said: "I think some patients do go wrong. I think when somebody phones an ambulance service saying 'my taxi is an hour and a half late please will you come and pick me up', then clearly that patient is in the wrong."

He said that had happened on New Year's Eve and was a regular occurrence on Friday and Saturday nights.