The, to my mind, embarrassed presenter told us first thing this morning:
The Turnaround time for ambulances dropping patients at hospital and getting back on the road has slipped according to the Scottish Tories. A Freedom of Information request by the Party shows the number of turnarounds taking more than an hour increased this year to an average of 43 a day. This compares to an average of 36 per day in 2018 and 27 a day in 2017. The target time is 20 minutes.
It’s a strange wee statistical extract which doesn’t tell us anything critical about, say, the overall response times or about patient outcomes. Did they ask about those and find them not newsworthy because they were too good? I say that because the SAS told us in February 2019:
The Scottish Ambulance Service changed the way it responds to the most unwell patients in 2016 with 999 call handlers giving the highest priority to incidents such as cardiac arrests. An evaluation of the changes has found the system has saved the equivalent of 1182 lives. Under the new system, call handlers are taking longer on the phone to despatch paramedics and some lower priority calls are waiting longer for an ambulance. A Freedom of Information request by the Scottish Conservatives revealed that an additional 62 patients were saved in Lothian as a result of the changes in 2017.
Remember the target time comment? It’s 20 minutes. Surely if they had evidence of failure on this, we’d hear about it? It must be too good.
How significant are the figures reported? The SAS responds to around 1.8 million calls per year. That’s around 4 900 per day.
Click to access University%20of%20Stirling%20-%20NCRM%20Evaluation%20Report.pdf
43 turnarounds per day taking longer than one hour is only 0.87% and 36 per day was only 0.73%. These are neither statistically significant levels nor changes in level.
The winners’ badge to be issued to all at Pacific Quay and Tory HQ:
Footnote: Why did Lisa Summers report on the Loony Dook instead of this? She has a sick note?
Footnote 2: Why is this only on Reporting Scotland and not yet on the website? The younger web-readers will see through it? The older RS audience is the target for the Scottish Tories?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
We had it again on GMS so probably going after their usual older listeners , but even non Tory voters see through this constant barraging by the Toties and Lie-Dims of anything to do with public services . People go by their own experiences , if the faults were so monumental we would have public outrage , the only outrage we hear of is coming from failed Unionists .
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Meanwhile this:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7836937/amp/23-ambulances-queue-outside-overstretched-E-department.html
Apologies for sullying your site with the Daily Mail but…
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Surprised that trash top even reported that, Tories can do no wrong in their eyes ! .
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John, I’d like to thank you for your sterling work, this year, as I take great satisfaction from your analysis and your wee asides. I wish you and yours a very happy and healthy New Year. All the very best. 😀🥃🥃
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Many thanks James
Much appreciated
All the best to you and yours too.
John
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