A POSTCODE lottery of ambulance response times for critically ill patients in Solihull, Knowle and Dorridge can be revealed by The Silhillian today.About half of category A 999 calls, those classed as ‘immediately life threatening’, are reached in eight minutes in Knowle and Dorridge – compared to 90 per cent in Solihull.
Bosses say the major gulf exists because Knowle and Dorridge are ‘rural’ areas, where ambulances have longer to travel to reach the patients.
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There are also fewer calls compared to Solihull according to the figures, released to The Silhillian under the Freedom of Information Act.
Yet West Midlands Ambulance service only has to meet one target for the whole of the region – to get to 75 per cent of category A patients in eight minutes.
This means the poor performance can continue in Knowle and Dorridge as long as the target is met – though it is failing so far this year with it at 71.8 per cent.
Bosses from other NHS authorities have written to WMAS “expressing continued concern regarding the lack of progress”. They refused to show The Silhillian the letter through FOI.
Ambulance chiefs say the number of calls is ‘constantly increasing’ and urged people only to call for ambulances where appropriate.
From November to January there were 79 category A calls in Knowle with 45 – 57 per cent – responded to in eight minutes.
There were 26 calls with 11 responded to in that time frame, 42.3 per cent.
Of the 512 calls in Solihull, 465 were responded to within eight minutes, 90.8 per cent.
All three areas failed to hit the next target, to get to 95 per cent of ‘serious but not immediately life threatening’ category B calls within 19 minutes.
This was 94.1 per cent in Solihull, 91.8 per cent in Knowle and 93.2 per cent in Dorridge.
See the full figures here.
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