Professor John Robertson OBA
Thanks to Dottie for alerting me to this.
From the Times today:
People having a heart attack or a stroke are being asked to get themselves to hospital after dialling 999 in some parts of England, as surging sickness levels plunge the NHS into another winter crisis.
The West Midlands Ambulance Service, which declared itself under “severe pressure” last week, confirmed a change to the script used by its 999 call handlers to suggest patients make their own way to hospital during periods of high demand.
Six out of ten ambulance services in England were at their highest level of alert last week. This means they were facing “extreme pressure” with a risk of “service failure”. The remaining four were all at “severe pressure”.
Making direct comparisons is no longer straightforward but earlier this year BBC UK made it possible, before pulling the plug (after Kaye Adams called them?) to reveal how Scotland’s ambulances were FOUR times faster.
In January 2024, I wrote:
Via the BBC’s How long do patients wait for an ambulance? app today, we can confirm that the average waiting time for a Scottish ambulance is 8 min and 46 secs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59549800
Also, from BBC UK on 14 December 2023:
Average response times of more than 38 minutes for category two emergency calls such as heart attacks and strokes – above the target time of 18 minuteshttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-67714151
Yes, I know the English figures are only for Category 2 emergency calls such as heart attacks and strokes and we can’t see if the Scottish figures are for the same or for all categories, but if they were for all categories including the less serious ones, that would make the Scottish average even more impressive!
I did expect not to find Scottish postcodes in the app, as is the case for Wales and Northern Ireland. Let’s see if BBC Scotland manage to get them removed after they see this.
The seem to have stopped offering this service in early March 2024 when the Scottish average wait for an ambulance was 8 minutes and 36 seconds but for England, they stopped posting the average to replace it with the percentage waiting more than 30 minutes – 27%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59549800
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
We don’t have to imagine, this happened in Inverurie:
“Mr Buchan’s sister-in-law also claims one of the first responders was joking on the phone with the ambulance call handler during the life-or-death situation.
“They were saying we’d get an ambulance quicker to Krakow (in Poland) than we would here.”
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen-aberdeenshire/6618963/inverurie-family-take-stroke-victim-to-hospital-amid-ambulance-delays/
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https://notesfrompoland.com/2021/11/30/patients-wait-hours-for-ambulances-as-polish-hospitals-struggle-amid-covid-surge/
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Only one in ten survive a heart attack. Better to get medical attention as quickly as possible.
It was bad during Covid.
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Well done John for highlighting the superior service provided by the Scottish Ambulance service
Recently my two elderly neighbours in North Ayrshire needed 999 calls within 24 hours of each other
The ambulance arrived in under 9 minutes on both occasions
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It’s no laughing matter but I have Oleta Adams ‘ song “Get here” now playing in my head.
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