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Ambulance service response
02/04/2009
The Scottish Ambulance Service has beaten its target to reach three quarters of life-threatening emergency callouts within eight minutes for the first time.
The percentage of 'Category A' calls across mainland Scotland reached within eight minutes hit 77 per cent in March this year - up 16 percentage points from 61 per cent in May 2007.
This was against an ongoing target to reach 75 per cent of calls within this time.
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon welcomed the milestone, but said that performance needed to be maintained and built upon in the future.
Ms Sturgeon said:
"I want to congratulate all the Scottish Ambulance Service staff who have worked so hard to reach this target. It is a great achievement of which they can be very proud.
"Of course, this progress must be maintained and improved further so that patients across the whole of Scotland get the consistently high level of service they deserve."
Pauline Howie, Acting Chief Executive of the Scottish Ambulance Service, said:
"The achievement of our eight-minute response target is a major milestone for the Scottish Ambulance Service and testament to the commitment, dedication and professionalism of all our staff.
"Our crews are reaching more people quicker than ever before and the organisation has made significant overall progress in the last year."
Last month, the Scottish Ambulance Service received 25.5 million pounds over the next three years to buy more than 700 new vehicles as part of the ongoing vehicle replacement programme.
The investment will see the overall size of the fleet grow from 1,369 to 1,410 by 2012.
In March 2009, the Scottish Ambulance Service received calls about a total of 12,693 Category A incidents , of which 9,828 (77.4 per cent) were met within eight minutes. The average response time to Category A calls across mainland Scotland was 6.5 minutes.
In 2008-9, 14,139 more people were seen within the eight-minute response time target for Category A calls than the previous year.