THE ambulance service for Notts is to be fined £3.5 million after it missed national targets for patients involved in life-threatening emergencies – for the third successive year.
Of the ten ambulance services in the country, East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) recorded the lowest figures for 2012-13 in one of two government targets.
NHS England – the central body responsible for quality of health services – revealed that the service was the only one to fail the Category A19 standard, which measures how long it takes to get a suitable vehicle on scene to take a patient to hospital. The target is for it to get to 95 per cent of cases within 19 minutes, while EMAS achieved 91.85 per cent.
EMAS admitted 52 calls a day are arriving later than this target time.
In the re-shuffle of health services in the aftermath of the Health and Social Care Bill, the ambulance service in Notts is commissioned by the Erewash Clinical Commissioning Group.
In a statement the commissioning group said that patients should be "reassured" and that action was being taken to improve the service.
It said it would be fining the service £3.5 million for missing its targets with one hand, but with the other it pledged to reinvest £3.4 million if the ambulance service started meeting its targets.
But Notts County Councillor Brian Wombwell, who sits on the Joint Health Scrutiny Committee, said: "Surely taking money off the service would make matters worse.
"It is not acceptable that targets are being missed, but it seems ridiculous to make the ambulance service poorer and ask them to improve."
The commissioning group said: "EMAS achieved one of two national standards they were required to meet in 2012/13.
"EMAS achieved the A8 measure which requires the ambulance service to get a response to 75 per cent of all immediately life-threatening calls across the East Midlands within eight minutes of the call being picked up, achieving 75.21 per cent."
Rakesh Marwaha, chief officer of NHS Erewash Clinical Commissioning Group, said: "It's vital that patients in the East Midlands receive high quality care as swiftly as possible, and clearly there is still work to do to ensure that EMAS achieve the response standards required.
"The national NHS contract has a financial consequence for ambulance trusts that fail to meet the agreed national standards for response times across an entire year.
"This equates to 2.5 per cent of the contract value. We have further invested money into EMAS in key areas which will help to transform performance.
"All of our patients can be assured that we have acted and invested to significantly uplift performance. This includes:
Following a review of the emergency operations centre and the fleet capacity, East Midlands CCGs have invested £3.4 million to help EMAS recruit an additional 155 employees and the provision of extra voluntary and private transport.
This investment in EMAS is through the "Being the Best" programme – an ongoing programme of improvement with the potential investment of a further £3.4 million for 2014/15 based on EMAS delivering their agreed contract performance standards in this year's contract;
Operational changes in EMAS call centres to improve response times;
Twice-weekly meetings with EMAS executives to review and monitor performance."
