Scottish Ambulance Service 'saving more lives'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34084611

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The Scottish Ambulance Service says it is saving more lives than ever before.

New figures suggested 200 more cardiac arrest patients were saved by ambulance crews compared with five years ago.

In the last 10 years, demand for ambulances increased by 55%, with crews responding to almost 750,000 incidents between April 2014 and March 2015.

The most common reason for calling an ambulance was a fall. The average response time for the most urgent calls was 6.5 minutes.

The statistics were published as part of the service's annual public review.

They showed that crews responded to 740,631 emergency incidents across Scotland last year and helped 658 patients to survive cardiac arrests.

About 20% of the incidents ambulances responded to were potentially life-threatening and more than a third were requests from GPs, referrals from the 111 number, hospital transfers, community alarms and other emergency services.

999 calls are split into three categories in order to identify which ones need the quickest response. The time taken by crews to reach life-threatening emergencies continued to average at about 6.6 minutes, compared with 9.5 minutes a decade ago.

Response times and call-outs

David Garbutt, chairman of the Scottish Ambulance Service, said: "Despite an exceptionally busy year for our frontline teams, the service is saving more lives than ever before. There are now 200 more cardiac arrest patients being saved by ambulance teams in Scotland every year compared to five years ago and we continue to improve on this every year.

"Our staff are working very hard in an extremely busy environment and every day they continue to provide compassionate, evidenced-based care for patients in often very challenging circumstances. Their commitment and dedication to patients is exceptional."

The air ambulance service flew 3,559 missions, an increase of 5% on the previous year.

Elderly patients

The service also said that more than 86,000 patients were treated safely at home, avoiding a trip to hospital.

Mr Garbutt added: "Ambulance teams are working with the wider NHS and social services to implement more new and integrated clinical pathways that enable the safe delivery of clinical care in the community.

"Falls are the largest single presentation for ambulance response and the service responded to over 71,000 cases last year.

"The development of integrated community care pathways to safely treat elderly falling patients has resulted in a 15% reduction in the numbers being taken to hospital by ambulance."

Earlier this year a senior Scottish paramedic called for a new system of targets for ambulance response times.

Anthony Haley, a team leader in the Scottish Ambulance Service, said targets should be adjusted to reflect which incidents needed a fast response.

The Scottish Ambulance Service said it had already made changes to ensure the most appropriate response takes place.