Now even GPs are told: Don’t call 999

AMBULANCE bosses have told GPs not to dial 999 as paramedics are too busy, it emerged yesterday,

Managers at a scandal-hit trust have instructed doctors to ‘think twice’ before summoning help for desperately ill patients.

The extraordinary request came a year after the same ambulance service, South East Coast, secretly downgraded thousands of emergency calls in a controversial pilot scheme.

The ambulance service covers a population of 4.5million people living in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire and is struggling to cope with soaring numbers of call-outs.

Managers wrote to GPs last week instructing them not to dial 999 for seriously ill patients, but ask relatives to take them to hospital instead.

Doctors will summon ambulances if they believe a patient they see in a routine appointment is very seriously ill.

This could include a baby with suspected meningitis or adult who has suffered a heart attack or stroke.

The letter asks doctors to ‘think twice’ before dialling 999 as the service was ‘extremely busy’ and under ‘far higher demand’.

But doctors and MPs said this latest attempt by managers to reduce demand puts lives at risk. Dr Julian Spinks, who practises near Strood, Kent, and received the letter last week, said: ‘The safety of the patient comes first and I don’t believe they should suffer or be put at risk because of the system not working. If they are struggling to meet demand now, what will it

‘Gobsmacking request’

be like in the winter?’ Tory MP Peter Bone said the request was ‘gobsmacking’ and urged GPs to ignore it.

‘I’m sure that the current situation is that GPs think carefully before calling an ambulance and only order an ambulance when it’s necessary. The

point is that the doctor should ignore it. I can’t imagine any GPs say “Well, this person probably needs an ambulance, but I’m not going to ring the ambulance because it might inconvenience the ambulance service.”’

And Dr John Cormack, a GP in Woodham Ferrers, Essex, condemned the letter, saying: ‘I’m hoping that they are not trying to put pressure on GPs not to call an ambulance when one is really needed.

‘I think it would be very foolish if they were to try and do that because it is putting patients at risk – and litigation would follow in its wake.’

Last year the trust’s chief executive Paul Sutton and chair Tony Thorne resigned following a controversial pilot scheme in which thousands of calls were secretly downgraded. Between December 2014 and February 2015, patients who were put through from the 111 helpline were made to wait ten minutes longer for ambulances.

The trust claimed they were being ‘re-triaged’ – reassessed – to check they were seriously ill but the watchdog said lives were put at risk.

A South East Coast Ambulance Service spokesman said: ‘We continue to face higher demand than we would usually expect at this time of year, meaning it is taking us longer than we would like to attend some calls.

‘This letter is part of regular conversations across our whole region driven not only by the demand facing our service but also demand on hospitals.

‘We are working closely with our colleagues across the NHS to manage this demand.’