By Ryan Sands
Local ambulance response times have again been brought into sharp focus after injured patients were forced to endure lengthy waits in Downpatrick and Kilkeel in recent days.
Last Wednesday morning (7 January), a 75-year-old man lay prone on the ground with a leg injury on a Downpatrick street in freezing temperatures—from before 7am—for almost five hours until an ambulance arrived, a situation for which the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) later apologised.
On Saturday, the Mourne Mountain Rescue Team responded to a call it received from a member of the public at 4.28pm “to provide assistance to a person who had sustained an injury at a premises in Kilkeel.” In an online post, the team wrote that, due to “a significant delay in an ambulance response and concerns for the person’s condition,” six of its members responded to offer assistance and provide support until a NIAS paramedic and, subsequently, an ambulance arrived. The team was stood down at 9pm.
A recent response to a freedom of information (FOI) request on the latest local ambulance response statistics—submitted by Down Community Health Committee—illustrates that target times were significantly exceeded in every local DEA throughout November.
The target time for Category 1 calls, which are defined as immediately life-threatening, is eight minutes, whilst the target response time for Category 2 calls, relating to potentially serious incidents, is 18 minutes.
The NIAS FOI response details that the average response time across Newry, Mourne and Down in November was 17 minutes and 31 seconds (17:31) for Category 1 calls—the longest in Northern Ireland—and 1 hour, 37 minutes and 58 seconds (1:37:58) for Category 2 calls.
Broken down by local DEA, the Category 1 average response times were: Crotlieve – 17:33; Downpatrick – 21:15; Newry – 13:10; Rowallane – 12:40; Slieve Croob – 25:05; Slieve Gullion – 19:39; and The Mournes – 20:13. The Category 2 times were: Crotlieve – 1:25:12; Downpatrick – 1:58:14; Newry – 1:26:29; Rowallane – 2:00:59; Slieve Croob – 1:28:14; Slieve Gullion – 1:22:21; and The Mournes – 1:48:29.
The shortest average Category 1 response time for a district in Northern Ireland was in Belfast (8:41), whilst the second longest average wait—after Newry, Mourne and Down—was in Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon (16:33).
Speaking on last week’s Downpatrick incident, South Down MLA Colin McGrath (SDLP) said that the Executive “must stop allowing shocking failures in the health service to be treated as normal” and that what had happened in the local town should “serve as a moment of reckoning for those in charge.”
“To hear that someone was left on the ground for hours in Downpatrick waiting for help is absolutely shocking,” he said.
“But this is not an unfortunate exception – it is a sign of a system that is failing people at their most vulnerable. This is the result of political decisions taken, and not taken, by the Executive.
“When ambulance delays, overcrowded emergency departments and people trapped in hospital beds become routine, it means leadership is failing. We should never accept this as the norm.”
To read the digital edition, download the Mourne Observer app – for apple click here – for android click here
