EAST Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) has been fined £3.5-million after missing a target on response times for the third year in a row.
Each year, ambulance services across the UK are required to meet set national performance standards through the NHS.
For 2012-2013, EMAS managed to fall within the target of getting to 75 per cent of life-threatening problems within eight minutes at 75.21 per cent, but missed the second target.
The other target for ambulance services to get a patient to hospital within 19 minutes of the call being received. The target is 95 per cent, but EMAS achieved 91.8 per cent.
EMAS is one of two ambulance services to miss this target, alongside the East of England Ambulance Service, and also the lowest of all the percentages achieved.
The percentage means that of the 234,120 responses made to life-threatening calls, 52 a day arrived off the target time.
EMAS said in statement in the first month of 2013/14 the target improved already by 1.21%. EMAS also found that if they could improve the speed of just 19 calls each day by eight minutes and ten seconds, they would meet the standard.
Dr James Gray, EMAS Medical Director said: "A tremendous amount of quality clinical care was provided to hundreds of thousands of people across the East Midlands during the 2012/13 performing year, and I thank our clinical colleagues and those working in the backroom functions providing support to them, for their continued commitment and dedication to provide the very best care, often during traumatic and challenging circumstances.
"The speed at which an ambulance response is given to an emergency call is important. There are also other elements that are as vital when providing emergency medical care.
"Negotiations with the organisations who pay (commission) us to provide emergency services have been successful and this year, we've been given additional funding which will be spent on extra frontline staff. This is on top of the 140 new staff we announced in March 2013.
"Our Being the Best improvement programme will also make a significant contribution to improving performance. It covers issues such as revising our staff rotas to ensure our resource levels match demand patterns; a management restructure to improve communication and support for staff and the introduction of Ambulance Hubs, Stations and Community Ambulance Stations to improve the speed at which we respond to calls and helps improve the working lives of our colleagues.
"These changes and investment, together with the continual development and improvement in the quality clinical care provided to our patients puts us in a better position this current performing year."
Under the new plans, there will be 9 hubs, 19 ambulance stations and 108 community ambulance stations across Lincolnshire.
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