More ambulance cars to hit road in bid to drive up response times

More rapid response vehicles will be put on duty in towns on the East Coast in a bid to speed up emergency ambulance response times.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service said extra vehicles would be introduced to Withernsea, Hornsea and Bridlington, as well as Filey, early next year.

It comes amid mounting concern about ambulance response times in remote parts of the East Riding.

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Last month two brothers from Hornsea, Iain and Simon Poole, described the service as “seriously broken” after trying to save their dying father’s life.

Despite living 450 yards from Hornsea ambulance station, the two vehicles sent by YAS were dispatched from Hull.

The first to arrive, after 13 minutes, was a rapid response vehicle and clinician, with an ambulance arriving a quarter of an hour later.

Ray Poole, 67, was pronounced dead around 10 minutes later.

A petition signed by hundreds of people, including many gathered by Mr Poole’s family, was handed to YAS chief executive David Whiting at a meeting with Beverley and Holderness MP Graham Stuart.

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Mr Whiting accepted that improvements needed to be made and said YAS was implementing plans targeting the four worst performing Clinical Commissioning Group areas in the region, including the East Riding.

The six-point plan includes deploying the extra vehicles.

Staff are also being consulted on changes to rotas, which YAS says will “better match our resources to patient demand particularly during evening periods and on weekends.”

It also says rural crews departing Hull Royal Infirmary will only be diverted to serious and life-threatening calls to make it more likely they return to base.

There will be an initiative to increase the number of publicly available defibrillators and more firefighters will be trained as co-responders. A pilot scheme is already underway in Pocklington.

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More volunteers from the community will also be recruited and trained as first responders. The volunteers are trained to attend emergency calls received by the ambulance service and provide care until the ambulance arrive. Calls can include anything from cardiac arrest to seizures and a diabetic emergency.

There are now a total of 150 in the East Riding, up from 70 last year.

Mr Stuart said: “Yorkshire Ambulance Service is starting two new community first responder schemes in January, one in Aldbrough and one in Patrington and I will be supporting YAS to get publicly available defibrillators installed across our villages with training also provided for local people.

“Families like that of Ray Poole want to know that everything possible is being done to create a world class ambulance service which reduces the likelihood of others suffering as they have done.”

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Vince Larvin, locality director for A&E operations in North and East Yorkshire at Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, said: “The additional rapid response vehicles for coastal towns in East Yorkshire and across into North Yorkshire will provide extra emergency cover and should help to improve our response times.

“Our continued focus on the quality of clinical care we provide to patients and the improvement of patient outcomes will be enhanced by these measures and we hope to see even higher survival rates in the area for patients suffering a cardiac arrest.

“In addition, the excellent support provided by our Community First Responders is highly valued and the commitment to recruit even more volunteers will further enhance their contribution.”

Statistics, obtained by the MP, show only 45.6 per cent of emergency calls were being met in the Mid-Holderness area within the eight-minute guideline. Previously they had risen to just over 50 per cent, up from 48 per cent, before dropping again in the six months from January to June this year.