General Chat

Target times for ambulances to reach some seriously ill patients could be lengthened, the BBC has learned.

A leaked NHS document includes plans to change the response time for some Red 2 patients - those with "serious but not the most life-threatening" conditions - from eight to 19 minutes in England.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30566207

Do you believe increasing response times could, as the leaked document suggests - produce substantial improvements?

I would have thought they should be trying to resuce response times not increase them - but that's just how my thought process works :-S

Just another way to sneak through yet more front line job cuts. :-(

I was in A&E in August when they rang for a priority 1 ambulance (equivalent to dialling 999 from home) and 2 paramedics to take me to another hospital. Despite them chasing it up it was over 3 hours before it arrived, so even if you get one to get you to hospital you can have a long wait before you are transferred if that becomes necessary. :-S

Ambulances are bound to take longer as time goes on.......more traffic, traffic calming schemes etc will all slow them down.

It sounds as if they aren't meeting the current response time. By making them longer, expectations are lower.

Assuming that there haven't been cuts, with an increasing population and more elderly, there must be a greater demand on the Service.

Flim-flam, it's just a way to meet targets :-P

What's really worrying is - how do they know who is an emergency, until they've turned up and seen the patient?
Perhaps more paramedics should be employed.

When I asked a consultant recently, why a treatment, that I am due to receive, keeps getting postponed, she said, it appears that many NHS Trusts are being told to delay certain non-emergency treatments for elderly people because of the funding constraints they are facing.

Maybe the plan behind increasing ambulance response times is that a large number of the call outs for ambulances involve the elderly, and that any of us oldies who dare to take ill, will pop our clogs before we reach a hospital - that would save a fortune that the NHS would otherwise need to spent on treating us oldies in hospital - just me being my usual cynical self ;-)

Meybe if they spent some of the Billions of Pounds they send out to other countries in aid and increased the number of ambulances and crews they could meet their targets,or is that too simple an answer to the problem. :-(

I have always said that when it comes to targets, 'one size fits all' is a waste of everyones time as it takes little account of local or individuals needs and circumstances.

Like it or not, resources are not finite, nor ever will be, regardless of how much money is put in, and there will always be an element of juggling about to ensure that everyone is kept happy.

Personally I will wait to see what transpires before offering comment.

Interestingly foreign aid amounts to only 1.7% of government spending so not an awfull lot there to play with. Most of it goes to Africa and the Indian sub continent.