Warning over one-man 999 crews

6:00pm Tuesday 11th December 2007

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By James Connell »

AMBULANCE bosses in Worcestershire plan to introduce more one-man rapid response crews to tackle emergencies - but staff have warned patients could be put at risk.

Liz Kabani, a senior call-taker with the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust, branded the one-man crews a "cheapskate plan".

Yesterday it was announced the trust will get £5 million extra funding next year to improve response times. The cash will buy more rapid response vehicles - manned by a single paramedic - and increase the number of paramedics. The move is needed to meet new Government targets, being introduced on April 1 when the 10 English trusts will be expected to respond to three-quarters of the most serious emergencies within eight minutes of receiving the 999 call.

But Mrs Kabani, Unison representative at Bransford, said a single driver would often have to call for back-up if someone was unconscious or had leg injuries as it was not safe for them to take them to hospital on their own.

Mrs Kabani, who fought to save the Emergency Operations Centre at Bransford when she backed the Worcester News' Keep it Local campaign, said: "If a patient has an arm injury or a minor head injury they will only have to wait once and can be taken straight to hospital. But, if the single responder cannot take them they wait twice - once for the paramedic and again for an ambulance to convey them to hospital. This is potentially dangerous. It puts patients at risk. We did have a state-of-the-art dispatch system but it's being removed and its the ambulance trust that has chosen to remove it. We have been told this is not based on finance, but clearly it is. We also need more ambulances, rather than cars, to convey people to hospital."

Trust chief executive Anthony Marsh said the trust had already bought 60 new ambulances and 30 rapid response vehicles, including cars and motorcycles.

He said: "It is true that we are increasing the number of rapid response vehicles across the region but we are not reducing the number of ambulances. When we talk to patients the number one thing they tell us is that they want is a fast response.

"By using more cars we can achieve that. In certain types of calls like a cardiac arrest every second counts. If a car can get there before an ambulance, the patient has a better chance of survival."