Ambulance Call-Out Figures Soar

There has been a large rise in the number of emergency calls to the ambulance service, according to figures obtained by the BBC. The increase in 999 call-outs is about a fifth in some areas, which the Ambulance Service Union says is placing extra stress on paramedics.

The reasons behind the increase may include changes in doctors’ out-of-hours cover, the union adds. The official figures will be published in April. Last year’s rise was 6%.

But the BBC understands that this year the Scottish Ambulance Service will report a 12% year-on-year increase, while in the West Midlands and the North East the rise could be as high as 20%.

As well as changes to doctors’ out-of-hours services, the Ambulance Service Union says more unnecessary calls and a recent British Heart Foundation campaign to raise awareness of chest pains could also explain the increase.

Spokesman Ray Carrick said: “There’s people thinking that in the night-time, perhaps, there’s no GP service available therefore the only option they have is to ring 999.”

Dr Mick Napton of the British Heart Foundation said the ambulance service was aware that its campaign to encourage people to dial 999 if they started suffering from chest pains would lead to more work for paramedics.

Despite that, he said, ambulance workers had given their full backing to the advice.

“By treating people sooner rather than later we achieve two things: a proportion of people who have a cardiac arrest die as a result of their heart attack for want of calling early enough.

“A proportion of those people may survive if they have access to defibrillation and emergency life support which paramedics can provide very quickly.

“And the second thing is that the sooner you get treatment for your heart attack the less damage to the heart there will be and less deterioration of quality of life for the patient.”

Last month, the Welsh Ambulance Service declared a state of “special emergency” after record demand in Cardiff and the Vale.

People were urged to dial 999 only in life-threatening cases after calls reached “unprecedented levels”.

The Welsh Assembly said it was monitoring the situation.

Last year’s figures showed emergency 999 calls for ambulances reached a 10-year high of nearly six million in England during 2005-6.

Ambulance services attended 4.8 million emergency incidents in this period.

The figure was 6% higher than the previous year, and almost double the 3.2 million calls made in 1995-96.

The number of patient journeys increased during the year, rising by 4% to 3.5 million from 3.3 million in 2004-5.