1500 local life-threatening 999 calls not responded to within target – Naughten

In Health by Denis Naughten

Friday 7th June 2013

Cllr. Laurence Fallon, Denis Naughten TD & Cllr. Domnick Connolly at the ambulance base in Roscommon Town, which is now the only lifeline for patients needing emergency treatment following the closure of Roscommon A&E.

Close to 1500 life threatening 999 calls made in the first three months of the year in the West did not have an ambulance at the scene within 19 minutes, which is the international standard response time, Denis Naughten has revealed.

“Delays in responding to life-threatening or potentially life-threatening 999 calls within the target time, and further delays in transporting patients to hospital, are putting patients at unnecessarily high risk, especially in rural areas,” claims Denis Naughten TD.

“We were promised by the HSE that when smaller hospital A&Es closed, the public would be provided with a much better and safer system, yet this system is reliant on an over-stretched and under-resourced ambulance service.

“While the vast majority of life-threatening 999 calls nationally have an ambulance at the scene within 19 minutes 65% of the time, the situation in the West can be as bad as 55%. It must also be remembered that a 24/7 A&E department is on average much further away for patients in the West than for the rest of the country, which puts patients at a far higher risk of dying or having serious long term complications on foot of delayed treatments.”

Commenting on the disturbing figures Cllr. Domnick Connolly said: “The removal of our A&E highlights the need to provide a fully functioning ambulance service along with the air ambulance; this clearly is not in place at present with West Roscommon in particular being badly served by ambulances.”

He went on to point out: “The average journey time to an A&E department for the whole of County Roscommon is 40minutes but in many areas that journey time is closer to an hour including Castleplunkett at 56 minutes; Castlerea at 54 minutes; Tulsk, Ballymoe and Strokestown at 53 minutes.

“The fact remains that an ambulance, either air or land, does not replace an A&E and I’m calling on the Government to immediately review its decision on our A&E. This must start with a reversal of the decision to have all ambulances bypass Roscommon Hospital.”

Cllr. Laurence Fallon added: “The poor response times by ambulances locally is an issue that I raised at a recent HSE forum meeting and I was shocked to be told that the ambulance service cannot provide local figures for access to ambulances in life-threatening situations.

“How can we accept the HSE’s view that the closure of our A&E is now much safer for patients when they are not collating the delays in getting an ambulance to patients throughout Co. Roscommon, never mind the delays in getting them to hospital.

“These figures highlight what we always knew, that Roscommon people would be isolated when our A&E closed. This situation cannot continue and, as a first step, the operation of our medical assessment unit must be extended and additional hours and services provided in our Urgent Care Centre,” concluded Cllr. Fallon.