Emergency Services and Support
During 2008/09 the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service responded to 113,792 emergency calls and 36,264 Doctors Urgent calls from across Northern Ireland. An emergency ambulance attended and delivered care to the patient for 113,792 incidents, arriving within 8 minutes for 69,946 of those calls requiring an ambulance.
As a regional ambulance service we operate from one Regional Emergency Medical Dispatch Centre (REMDC) based at Ambulance Headquarters in Belfast. Everytime we receive a 999 call from
a member of the public, our call handlers known as Emergency Medical Dispatchers use advanced bespoke software systems to put the call into one of the three categories based on the
clinical/medical urgency of the call. These systems allow our Control staff to provide those making a 999 call with pre-arrival medical advice in advance of the ambulance arriving with
them. It also permits us to prioritise calls to ensure those in need receive the appropriate response.
In line with other UK ambulance services, emergency medical dispatchers ask a series of carefully structured questions so that 999 calls can be put into one of three categories A, B or C.
We class the most serious calls-those where there is an immediate threat to life - as Category A.
Those calls which are serious, but not life-threatening, are prioritised as Category B calls, while those which are neither serious nor life-threatening are graded as Category C. Each call is given a response appropriate to its categorisation.
We have a range of highly-skilled frontline operational staff who will treat our patients.
The government sets targets for us to reach our patients within timescales based upon the different categories of calls.
These targets state that we must reach:
- From April 2008, respond to an average of 70 per cent of Category A calls within eight minutes, with performance in individual Board areas being improved to at least 62.5% by March 2009;
- 95 per cent of Category B calls within 18 minutes (EHSSB) or 21 minutes (NHSSB, SHSSB, WHSSB)
- 'Response to Cat C calls (which are neither life threatening or serious) may not require an ambulance response but an appropriate clinical response will always be provided. Where an ambulance response is required targets for this have been agreed with our commissioners'
999 calls are responded to by the nearest available ambulance or appropriate resource.
Non Emergency Services and Support
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