Wednesday 24 April 2013

March - a busy month for emergency calls.



I see once again the Welsh Conservatives and their buddies, the Liberal Democrats, are "disgusted" that in March the Welsh Ambulance service failed to reach it's all Wales target of reaching 65% life threatening emergency calls withing 8 minutes. According to the BBC Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams accused Welsh ministers of failing to address the issue calling the figures an "absolute disgrace".

I've posted in the past that I think the statistics collected are a bit worthless see 999 responce times and pointless statistics.

And we all know what the Conservative led Coalition in England want to do with the NHS - privatise it completely. See BBC House of Lords to debate NHS 'privatisation'

But back to March 2013 - when fast swathes of Wales was covered in deep snow, whilst the rest of us shivered in bitter cold winds, it was not surprising that the number of emergency calls in March where up by 2,069 compared to March 2012.  In fact March 2013 had the highest monthly number of Category A calls since the service classification changes introduced in December 2011.

Something both the BBC "Ambulance delays: Wales targets missed in every area." and the Daily Post  "Ambulance Service misses 999 response time target for most serious calls for tenth month in a row" think not important to point out.

But why let the facts get in the way of a good story or some political point scoring.

For "latest National Statistics produced by the Welsh Government were released on 24 April 2013 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority" see Ambulance services, March 2013.

1 comment:

Welsh not British said...

If this was a blip in an otherwise good record then yes it might be cheap point scoring.

But it's now TEN months since our ambulance service hit it's target which is 10% lower than the targets in England and Scotland.

There are babies in Wales who were conceived and born in that time.