Health Minister Calls for Urgent Investigation into Response Time of Ambulance Services

Health Minister Calls for Urgent Investigation into Response Time of Ambulance ServicesSubmitted by Dinesh Chandra Gaur on Sat, 01/18/2014 - 11:36 

Missing crucial response time targets has led Health Minister James Reilly to conduct an urgent review of the country's ambulance services. He has passed an order to the Health Watchdog to increase the pace of its investigation into ambulance emergency response times. The issue is not a trivial one, as delays in response times put lives of patients at risk.
Oireachtas Health Committee received worrisome figures last year over services across every ambulance region regularly missing response time targets related to life-threatening emergencies.

There are response time targets set for the ambulance services by the HSE. According to the set target, 70% of calls relating to the most serious of emergencies should get a response within 18 minutes and 59 seconds. Such calls are also called as 'Echo' calls.
Delta calls are the ones related to life-threatening emergencies apart from cardiac or respiratory arrests. Compliance rate for those is 68%.
According to figures, the West and the Dublin ambulance was not able to meet the target of response times, and recorded 60.8% and 61.4% respectively for 'Echo' target.
The Health Service Executive received criticism in past few months for not being able to solve the problem of ambulances ending up going at the wrong addresses.