There were ambulance wait times of over four hours for life-threatening emergency calls last year, new figures released to Newstalk show.
It took over four hours for an ambulance to arrive at a life-threatening emergency call 94 times last year., 21 of these were over five hours.
The HSE aims to respond to life-threatening heart and respiratory calls within 18 minutes and 59 seconds in 80% of cases.Other life-threatening emergencies should be responded to within the same timeframe in 50% of cases. On almost 6,200 occasions last year, it took over an hour for an ambulance to respond to either of these types of calls.That was followed by over six hours to calls in Cork and Westmeath.David Hall is the chief executive of Lifeline Ambulance Service.
"HIQA now need to have a look at the clinical outcome of those calls, to see were there any adverse clinical outcomes upon the patients who were left waiting so long," he said."To have so many people waiting so long would be very worrying [and] very concerning."That's the real way that this needs to be evaluated properly, and the appropriate measures and steps need to be taken to protect lives," he added.
The Oireachtas Health Committee will discuss ambulance services - including response times - with the National Ambulance Service and Dublin Fire Brigade later this morning.Share this article
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