Ambulance resources can be pretty stretched dealing with jobs which are not really life threatening emergencies. Official statistics tell us that 9 out of 10 dispatches are to non-life threatening emergencies. But the ambulance service is faced with the need to achieve sufficient government funding for development by making the 8 minute deadline in responding to these types of jobs. To do so, their response is to send a single medic in a fast response car. Typically the car driver will be sent to report back on resource requirements on scene and hold the fort until those resources arrive. Once on scene, these fast response car medics stop the clock. There is no further auditable oversight. The dispatchers have made their target and there is no longer a financial incentive or even much of a medical one for rushing other resources to the scene.
So how does this affect you? Well, firstly it is important to bear in mind that two person traditional ambulances are not being complimented by the cars but gradually and partially replaced by them. Having more cars is cheaper and allows more 8 minute deadlines to be met. But there is a limit to what a single medic can do for you. Indeed, in many causes of trauma and medical emergency, the JRCALC guidelines (a sort of ambulance personnel bible) instruct us to transport the patient without delay to definitive medical care i.e. hospital resuscitation departments and/or surgical theatres. Sometimes rapid surgical intervention is all that will save you.
Quite simply, delays on scene as you wait for transport which is fewer and farther between could leave you bleeding to death on the side of the road, your last view a helpless medic who’s done all they can. And since outcomes are rarely audited like response times are, no one but us would know.
