The Herald’s Health Correspondent, once more, tries to dig up a scare story but bases it on her usual misrepresentation of statistics.
The above graph does show an increase in callouts but the claim:
is spurious.
First, the 2022 data so far, suggest a plateau and not an ongoing increase, in callouts. Second the evidence of actual harm is statistically insignificant. We are told that the number of the most urgent cases where the response time took more than 60 minutes had climbed from 5 per year in 2018-2020 to 22 last year. Oooh four times as many? Yes, but really, in the context of the thousands of calls, a percentage increase from 0.052% to 0.11% – not statistically significant.
Here’s another way of looking at the stats.
According to BBC Scotland in August 2021:
The Scottish Ambulance Service instituted a colour-coded response system in 2016.
These deemed purple cases to be the most severe – where there is a 10% or more chance of cardiac arrest.
In 2020-21, 10,687 purple cases were seen in under 10 minutes, compared with 8,304 in 2018-19.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-58188218
And from the Edinburgh News in 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.
Talking-up Scotland 
The British Nationalist unionists would basically rather see people die so they can SNP bad and secure wall to wall ‘media’ attention to their lies, as a distraction to their party’s disgraceful assault on the NHS in England. The unusual recent rise in non Covid related deaths in England and Wales (the ‘UK’ according to Dr Campbell at his youtube channel) is 16%+, that’s very high and Dr C recommends an immediate investigation by the ‘government’ and, pig might fly! One of the many reasons mentioned, which may be causing this rise in deaths, was the lack of actual healthcare services. Numbers are up in other countries, but England and Wales it’s particularly serious.
Scotland’s NHS is in great peril with England’s governments’ ‘internal market act’. Deals are no doubt already in the Tory bag, selling it off bit by bit, we cannot allow the cabal in London to sell off Scotland’s NHS on top of the horror that is Brexit, being forced onto Scotland.
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Even by the Heralds standards, this “story” was a bit of a lame effort at yet another scare.
To then class it as a Premium Story was taking the ..
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On the internet there will be several, similar regurgitated accounts.
At times of stress do not wait for an ambulance. Get to A&E, Doctor surgery or healthcare centre as quickly as possible. The quickest route possible. Only one person in ten survive a heart attack. If a person becomes unconscious, there are six minutes to be resuscitated.
Prevention is better than cure. Diet and exercise. Less smoking, drinking and drugging.
On the internet there will be several, similar regurgitated accounts.
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