Regional information available from this report Ambulance trusts in England closing on national target, NHS Information Centre report shows Ambulance trusts in England are getting closer to the national target for responding to emergency calls, new figures from The NHS Information Centre show today.

In 2010/11, seven of the 12 trusts hit or surpassed the emergency (Category A) call target; which requires 75 per cent of calls to be reached by an emergency response vehicle within eight minutes of the call being received at the control room.

This is the same as the previous year. However, looking at England as a whole, the margin trusts are falling short by is getting smaller and the national average, which remained at 74.3 per cent for the last two years, has now risen to 74.9 per cent.

The report also shows that in 2010/11:

• Paramedics dealt with nearly 1.8 million emergency call-outs where the patient was treated only at the scene and not taken to hospital; a 10 per cent rise on the previous year. Data on this subject has been presented in this report for the last two years only.
• The number of emergency calls2 topped eight million for the first time; rising by nearly 210,000 (nearly three per cent) from the previous year to reach almost 8.1 million.
• Of these, 6.6 million calls (nearly 82 per cent) resulted in an emergency response arriving at the scene of the incident, a 191,300 (three per cent) increase over last year when there was an emergency response for 6.4 million calls.

NHS Information Centre chief executive Tim Straughan said:

“Our annual report shows that ambulance trusts in England are dealing with more emergency calls each year; with the latest annual total topping eight million.

“Despite the increased workload, trusts are moving closer to achieving the target for being on the scene of the most serious incidents within eight minutes. It is also interesting to note the fairly big rise in the number of call-outs where the patient is treated at the scene only and not taken to hospital. As only two years' data is available at present, more annual information is needed to see if a trend for this emerges.”

* please see note to editor 4.

The report can be accessed here: www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/ambserv11

Notes to editors

1. The NHS Information Centre for health and social care (The NHS IC) is England's authoritative, central, independent source of health and social care information. It works with a wide range of health and social care providers nationwide to provide the facts and figures that help the NHS and social services run effectively. Its role is to collect data, analyse it and convert it into useful information which helps providers improve their services and supports academics, researchers, regulators and policymakers in their work. The NHS IC also produces a wide range of statistical publications each year across a number of areas including: primary care, health and lifestyles, screening, hospital care, population and geography, social care and workforce and pay statistics.

2. Calls and responses: Calls are received by the ambulance service – there may be multiple calls recorded for one incident. Category C calls only may be resolved over the telephone.

Full category definitions:

Category A: presenting conditions, which may be immediately life threatening and should receive an emergency response within 8 minutes irrespective of location in 75 per cent of cases. Presenting conditions, which require a fully equipped ambulance vehicle to attend the incident, must have an ambulance vehicle arrive within 19 minutes of the request for transport being made in 95 per cent of cases, unless the control room decides that an ambulance is not required.

Category B: presenting conditions, which though serious are not immediately life threatening and must receive a response within 19 minutes in 95 per cent of cases. Due to a change in guidance, data for 2010/11 is not fully comparable with previous years.

Category C: presenting conditions which are not immediately serious or life threatening. For these calls the response time standards are not set nationally but are locally determined.

3. For the purposes of the Category A 8-minute standard, an emergency response may only be by:

a. An emergency ambulance; or

b. A rapid response vehicle equipped with a defibrillator to provide treatment at the scene; or

c. An approved first responder equipped with a defibrillator, who is accountable to the ambulance service; or when a healthcare professional is at the location of the incident, equipped with a defibrillator and deemed clinically appropriate to respond by the trust. A first responder is not a substitute for an ambulance response and an ambulance response should be dispatched to all calls attended by an approved first responder.

4. During the 2010 -11 submission, it was found that the North East Ambulance Trust had miscoded certain category A calls as category C. The 2010-11 data was resubmitted and is correct as published. The impact at national level in 2010-11 was 0.1 per cent. This issue may have affected previous years submissions, however the impact cannot be confirmed (a revised dataset for previous years is not readily available).Changes to the affected categories are very small at a regional basis and therefore changes are negligable at national level.

5. The way in which response times are measured changed on April 1 2008, which means timing data prior to 2008/09 is not fully comparable with the figures in this report. The new “call connect” response times are now measured from the point where the call is received at the control room switchboard to when the response arrives on scene. Prior to the change, response times were measured from the point where a series of details were recorded by the control room, such as exact location and nature of the incident, to when the response arrived on scene.

6. For media enquires please call 0845 257 6990 or contact: mediaenquiries@ic.nhs.uk