999 handlers will get longer to assess calls

NHS call handlers are to be given longer to assess 999 calls to stop trusts sending out volunteers on bicycles simply to hit ambulance targets.

The reforms come after a series of trusts were accused of risking safety by taking steps that allowed them to claim standards had been hit – even though the help that was needed had not been given.

Staff from East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) said a “fixation” with hitting targets meant that single-staffed “rapid response vehicles” (RRV) were increasingly sent to calls where an ambulance was needed.

Elderly, frail patients were then left lying on the ground waiting up to two or three hours for the ambulance to turn up, a senior paramedic said.

Under NHS targets, 999 calls are supposed to be assessed within 60 seconds, with a response sent out to 75 per cent of life-threatening calls within eight minutes. But the system means that targets can be hit even if the initial response comes from a volunteer responder on a bike, with as little as 19 hours’ training, or from a single staff member in a car.

Norman Lamb MP, a former health minister, last night raised concerns about practices at EEAST, where the proportion of calls receiving a response from an RRV has risen from 31 per cent to 42 per cent in a year. He said the trust was “at risk of chasing a target, rather than improving patient care”, which was “perverse in the extreme”.

An EEAST spokesman said: “The trust does not put targets before safety, rather it prioritises its response to the sickest patients.”