MORE than 850 seriously ill patients had to wait at least an hour for an ambulance, new figures show. And one high priority call was not dealt with for more than three hours and 15 minutes during the second half of last year. Stats from the National Ambulance Service indicate that Cork and Wexford were the counties worst affected by prolonged delays in providing urgent emergency services.
However, the ambulance service said they had been close to meeting their targets for responding to ‘Purple’ and ‘Red’ calls, where there is a life-threatening illness or injury, cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest. Figures for the last six months of last year show that an ambulance did not arrive at a total of 732 calls for a period of between 60 and 90 minutes. There were a further 110 emergency calls that took between 90 and 120 minutes.
Response times for another 20 ‘Red’ calls – which are classified as life-threatening illnesses other than cardiac and respiratory arrest – ranged between two hours and three hours. There were two ‘Red’ calls, one in Carlow and one in Wexford , where an ambulance did not arrive for over 180 minutes. Response time for the emergency in Co Carlow logged at three hours, 15 minutes.
An information note read: “Some of the higher response times may be attributed to the fact the call was a low acuity call for the majority of time and was upgraded to the higher acuity category.” Meanwhile, the HSE has issued a major and urgent warning to dru.
