How North East ambulances meet urgent call targets
The North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) is the only one in England to meet the level required for responding to the most urgent calls, according to NHS figures.
The standard time for category one patients – those suffering life-threatening injuries and illnesses – is seven minutes. NEAS's average was six minutes and 20 seconds in December.
The service said it had focused on building strong relationships with hospitals, including monitoring pressures so crews could be diverted, and treating patients in the community.
But winter pressures have also had an effect, with a 5.3% rise in category one calls since December, and more delays in handing over patients at accident and emergency departments.
NEAS strategic head of emergency preparedness, resilience and response Stuart Holliday said the service had implemented a range of measures to help with response times.
"Sometimes we'll have one of our crews look after a couple of patients to release another, at other times, we may put a member of our team into the hospital at particular times of the year... to be a bit of a liaison between the hospital, our crews and our control, so everybody is appraised of what the situation is and that we can make plans in order to maybe divert the next crew coming into another hospital," he said.
"Or sometimes we see the pressure building up, and we will take a decision that this patient will be seen quicker at a different hospital to the one they might expect to go to."
As well as the live monitoring of pressures across hospitals, NEAS has developed other ways to speed up its response times and patient handovers.
They are increasingly treating patients on the phone or in the community instead of referring them to hospital, or taking them to non-emergency healthcare where possible.
Another element is the Patient Transport Service, which takes patients into hospitals and home again.
On an average day, it makes about 2,800 pre-planned journeys and an additional 400 unplanned.
It also makes about 180 to provide discharge transport to get patients home and free up beds for those arriving by emergency ambulance, which NEAS said helped to speed up handovers.
