999 service hits its target

Crews managed to get to over 75 per cent of patients in the 2012-13 financial year.

However the service failed to reach its second target of responding to 95 per cent of calls within 19 minutes with a vehicle suitable to take a patient to hospital. It missed the target by 3.15 per cent.

Dr James Gray, Emas medical director, said: “A tremendous amount of quality clinical care was provided to hundreds of thousands of people across the region during the 2012/13 performing year, and I thank our clinical colleagues and those working in the backroom functions providing support to them, for their continued commitment and dedication to provide the very best care, often during traumatic and challenging circumstances.”

He added: “Negotiations with the organisations who pay us to provide emergency services have been successful and this year, we’ve been given additional funding which will be spent on extra frontline staff. This is on top of the 140 new staff we announced in March this year.

“Our Being the Best improvement programme will also make a significant contribution to improving performance.

“It covers issues such as revising our staff rotas, implementing a management restructure to improve communication and support for staff and introducing ambulance hubs and community ambulance stations to improve the speed at which we respond to calls and to improve the working lives of our colleagues.”

Emas’ additional funding, of £3.4m, has come from its clinical commissioning groups which pays the service.

The funds will be used to recruit 155 staff and buy more vehicles.

The news came as the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said when it last inspected Emas it found the service was failing to meet three of six key standards, which included the fact that some patients were waiting too long for treatment.

Emas said the extra funding would help it address these issues.