Number of People Dead before Ambulance Arrived up 70% since 2016 - Peadar Tóibín TD
16/08/2024
According to data released to the Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín TD, there has been a significant increase in the length of time people are left waiting for an ambulance to arrive. The data, released by the National Ambulance Service following a parliamentary question, shows a 36% increase in the average ambulance response time since 2019.
AVERAGE AMBULANCE RESPONSE TIME PER YEAR:
2019 = 18 mins
2020 = 18.9 mins
2021 = 23.5 mins
2022 = 26.8 mins
2023 = 24.5 mins
The correspondence from the Director of the National Ambulance Service to Deputy Tóibín also shows that in 2016 some 15,395 or 8% of ambulances took longer than one hour to handover a patient in a hospital. By 2022 this figure had risen to 94,639 - 38% of ambulances waited longer than an hour to handover a patient in a hospital before being dispatched on the next call. Last year the figure stood at 76,970 or 30%.
Meanwhile the data also shows that the number of times a person was dead by the time the ambulance arrived at the scene has increased by 68% between 2016 and 2023.
Total Calls attended by NAS Where Patient was Deceased:
2016 657
2017 728
2018 748
2019 849
2020 907
2021 1053
2022 1008
2023 1108
Speaking today, Deputy Tóibín said:
"We need to bear in mind that behind each of these figures is a human being. The case reported in the media this week is very sad, where someone living five minutes from the ambulance depot died during the two hour wait for an ambulance from a suspected asthma attack. There are tragic and heartbreaking stories behind each of these statistics. We know that 1,108 people were dead by the time an ambulance reached them last year, up from 657 in 2016. There can be no doubt that the increase in the average response time is leading to higher rates of mortality".
Deputy Tóibín continued: "There can also be no doubt that the delay in discharging a patient at the hospital is having an impact on response times. One of the biggest reasons for the delays in dispatch or discharging on the hospital grounds is the scarcity of trolleys in ED departments. It often happens that when a patient is transported from the ambulance into the hospital on an ambulance trolley, they are left waiting in ED on the ambulance trolley, and thus the ambulance has to wait until an alternative trolley is freed up. This is mind boggling stuff".
"It's a major scandal that ambulances can't respond to calls because their trolley is stuck in the ED department. The recruitment freeze which has been crippling frontline services for the the first half of this year has resulted in situations where paramedics are providing care in the hospital due to a shortage of nurses - the paramedic has to stay with their patient and cannot get back into the driver's seat in the ambulance outside. There needs to be an audit conducted of these cases to determine the impact that ambulance response time is having on patient outcomes. I have no doubt that there are thousands of people in early graves today because an ambulance didn't reach them on time. It's a shocking situation", concluded Tóibín.
ENDS
