UK Ambulance Trusts Found to Misreport Response Times

Six ambulance trusts have been found to have "misreported'' response times, the Department of Health admitted yesterday.

A Department of Health audit found the trusts had failed to record correct details of how they responded to the life-threatening emergency calls, with tactics including starting the clock late.

The Government has set a target saying 75 per cent of such ''Category A'' calls should be responded to within eight minutes.

The trusts include the former West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire (now both part of the Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust), Cumbria (now part of the North West Ambulance Service Trust), West Midlands (now part of the West Midlands Ambulance Service Trust), the West Country Ambulance Service Trusts (now part of the South Western Ambulance Service Trust) and the Staffordshire Ambulance Service Trust.

Six million emergency ambulance calls were received in England between April 2005 and March this year, almost double the annual number of a decade ago.

Mike Jackson, of the public service trade union Unison, said: "The fact that there have been some mistakes over recording of response data in a minority of trusts is mainly down to systems failure and confusion over when 'the clock starts ticking'. ''

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