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Digital

National Statistics
Publication, Part of

Ambulance Services, England - 2007-08

Official statistics, National statistics
Publication Date:
Geographic Coverage:
England
Geographical Granularity:
Ambulance Trusts
Date Range:
01 Apr 1997 to 31 Mar 2008

Summary

This bulletin contains information about the ambulance services provided by the National Health Service in England. The information is collected from individual ambulance trusts and shows volume of activity and performance levels against required standards (eg responses within 8 or 19 minutes). This includes information on emergency and urgent calls, response times and patient journeys.

This information is collected via the KA34 return; a copy of which is included at the end of the bulletin.

Note:

Subsequent to publishing 2007-08 data, East of England carried out an internal audit, the result of this was a reduction of their 8 minute response rates from 75.1% to 75.0%. The impact on England level data is negligible (dated 16/12/2008).

Highlights

In 2007-08

  • the total number of emergency and urgent calls, under revised definitions from 1st April 2007 (* see note below), was 7.2 million
  • of these, 5.9 million calls (81 per cent) resulted in an emergency response arriving at the scene of the incident
  • of these calls resulting in an emergency response, 31 per cent (1.8 million) were classed as category A immediately life threatening incidents and 42 per cent (2.5 million) were classed as category B serious, but not immediately life-threatening incidents
  • the percentage of category A incidents that resulted in an emergency response arriving at the scene of the incident within 8 minutes in 2007-08 is 77.1 per cent this is the highest rate recorded and compares with 74.6 per cent last year
  • of the 12 NHS organisations providing ambulance services, 10 met or exceeded the 75% standard for 8 minute response times
  • the percentage of category A incidents that resulted in an ambulance vehicle capable of transporting the patient arriving at the scene within 19 minutes was 97.1 per cent, similar to last year (97.0 per cent)
  • the number of category B incidents (serious but not immediately life threatening) was 2.5 million and of these 2.3 million (91.5%) were responded to with a vehicle capable of transporting the patient within 19 minutes, this compares to 90.5% last year
  • the number of emergency and urgent patient journeys was 4.26 million (which was similar to 2006-07 when it was 4.27 million).

* Note; Urgent calls (previously not collected) are now combined with emergency calls. Time series comparisons of absolute numbers is not possible, however performance against response time requirements for Category A and B should not be affected.

Resources

Last edited: 1 October 2018 10:03 am