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The North East ambulance service has said it is still asking some patients to get a lift to hospital instead of waiting for an ambulance, despite a health minister saying this is unacceptable. (See 9.33am.) Dr Mathew Beattie, its medical director, said the service would usually move up and down an escalation plan as demand for crews increased and decreased, but the decision was taken on New Year’s Eve to go straight to its highest level. That meant telling patients on calls that were not potentially life-threatening, and where the ambulance was delayed, that they could choose to get a lift to hospital. Beattie went on:
Under normal circumstances, we would move up and down our clinical escalation levels reactively as each point is triggered or demand reduces.
The measures we took over the bank holiday weekend were implemented because we have seen activity fluctuating dramatically with surges in demand.
Our performance has not returned to normal and it is still taking us too long to get an ambulance to patients, unfortunately due to this patients remain at risk, which is unacceptable.
Where it is safe we will continue to ask patients to make their own way to hospital. However, we would never ask anyone to drive themselves to hospital with a life-threatening illness.