Ambulance 999 response times 'mis-reported'

Last updated at 14:07 14 August 2006


The Government pledged to change ambulance control room systems today after six trusts were found to have "mis-reported" their response times.

A Department of Health audit found that six trusts had failed to record correct details for how they responded to the most serious life-threatening emergency calls.

The Government has set a target saying 75% of such 'Category A' calls should be responded to within eight minutes.

The trusts are the former West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire (now both part of the Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust), Cumbria (now part of the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust), West Midlands (now part of the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust), the West Country Ambulance Service NHS Trusts (now part of the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust) and the unchanged Staffordshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

All trusts had now corrected their procedures but follow-up audits "will take place to check that they are now reporting correctly", the Department of Health said.

The mis-reporting included "starting the clock later than the point defined by the Department of Health, incorrect data management and the clocks on different servers not being synchronised which meant that time taken to respond was not calculated correctly," it added.

The news comes as official figures showed that ambulance 999 calls have reached a 10-year high.

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