Council to review ambulance response times

Herefordshire Council is to undertake a formal review of the ambulance response service in the county - with particular focus on the market towns of Ledbury and Ross.

The review will also ensure that there is no drift of the emergency resource from Herefordshire to other parts of the region, following the creation of the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

Councillor Dr Kay Swinburne, chairman of the health scrutiny committee, praised the work of paramedics and the ambulance service and said she anticipated that the review would highlight improved levels of service overall as well as any potential deficits in the county's service provision.

"It is important that the county's residents are confident that when they dial 999 that an appropriate response is delivered", she said. "This review will look behind the target response figures and seek assurance that our residents are receiving the level of service that they need and deserve".

The committee will discuss the scope, aims and timescale for the review with the ambulance service before it is launched.

In line with the role of the scrutiny committee, which is to probe, investigate and ask difficult questions on behalf of the people of Herefordshire, it drilled down into ambulance response figures since April this year by postcode and focused on HR8 (covering the Ledbury area) and HR9 (covering the Ross-On-Wye area).

Response times for category A or life threatening incidents varied for Ledbury. In May, June and July this year, 50.0, 57.1 and 57.9 per cent of calls respectively were responded to within eight minutes, although in August it increased to 72.7 per cent. In Ross, 73.1 per cent of calls were responded to within eight minutes in June, but in August it was just 47.8 per cent. The scrutiny committee felt these performance levels merited particular focus in the formal review, especially when response times in Hereford city were between 80 and 90 per cent for the same period.

The committee also welcomed the news that the projected response times for the county for the month of September brought Herefordshire into line with those experienced in Worcester and Shropshire.