The number of patients dying by the time an ambulance could reach their house has increased by 70% in the past eight years, new HSE figures have shown.
The figures were requested through a parliamentary question by Aontú leader, Peadar Tóibín. TD.
In 2016, when the figures on National Ambulance Service ambulance response times became available, there were 657 deaths by the time an ambulance arrived at the patient’s home. In 2022, this figure was 1008, and in 2023, last year, it had risen again 1,108, showing that the figure appears to still be rising.
“Aontú has found out that, for 1,108 callouts last year attended by the National Ambulance Service, the person was dead by the time of arrival,” Toibín said in reaction to the figures.
“Under this government, this number is getting higher every year.
“The has been an incredible increase in the number of people who have died before an ambulance reached them in the last few years…The figure is getting worse ever year and its because the length of time it takes for an ambulance to reach a person is getting longer.
“The main driver of this is the fact that thousands of ambulances are stuck at A&Es for more than an hour trying to deliver their patient becuase the A&Es are so over crowded.
“In 2022, on 94,639 occasions an ambulance was waiting more than an hour for a handover, and on 76,970 occasions across 2023.
“We need to move heaven and earth to increase the number of ambulances and ambulance staff and drivers in the country, but we also need more A&E capacity and more GPs to reduce the pressure on A&Es. It’s a vicious circle, lack of resources in one area of the health service is driving dangerous problems in other sectors.”
Late last month, Toibín asked Health Minister Stephen Donnelly about the fact that the average ambulance response time in Ireland “has been increasing significantly in the past few years,” calling the figures “heartbreaking.”
“This is a very serious statistic that shows lives are being put in danger as a result of late ambulance arrival,” he said.
Minister Donnelly replied at the time that the government had invested significantly into the National Ambulance Service since 2019.
“We must endeavour to do everything we can to make sure the responses are properly triaged and then the response times are such that where they really do need to be there very quickly this is achieved,” he said.
“We have invested more than €219 million in the National Ambulance Service since 2019. It represents a €50 million increase. It is has been a very significant investment to ensure we have the best possible ambulance service.
“The increase in staff has been important. If we look back to 2015, over the past eight years the number of staff has increased by more than one third. We have 600 more people working in the service than we had in 2015. To be clear, just last year 228 of those were added. There was a big increase in the number of people working in the national ambulance service last year.”
However, he added that he “fully appreciated” Toibín’s point about response times.
“Neither I, the Deputy nor those working in our ambulance service would stand over or defend those individual cases where people clearly have waited far too long – nobody would defend that,” he said.
“On the response times, the core targets the service works to are the ECHO and the DELTA times. They were very close to those times last year.”
The Minister said that the country was “nearly there” in terms of ambulance response time targets.
“The Deputy will be aware of the ECHO and the DELTA response times and the targets,” he said.
“The target for the ECHO calls, which includes cardiac, is 75% within the time period. To November of last year they were at about 73%, which is 2% off the target. The DELTA calls had a target of 45%. They were at 44.5%, so nearly there.”
He said that the ambition for this year was to not just meet the targets, but to “exceed” them.
“They are not yet hitting those targets,” he said.
“The good news is that the majority of those several 100 extra staff were hired very late last year, and so the benefit of those extra staff for increased response times will not have been seen in the 2023 figures. We have, therefore, an ambition this year not just to meet the response time targets but to exceed them.”