£2.6m fine threatens West Midlands Ambulance Service

West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust could be fined after crews narrowly missed targets over a six-month period – both the second and third quarters of the current financial year.

Ambulances should arrive on scene within eight minutes for the most serious cases. This is broken down into two categories – Red 1 and Red 2.

Red 1 patients are the highest priority cases, while patients classed as Red 2 have conditions 'which may be life-threatening but less time critical' according to guidelines published by NHS England.

It is for those Red 2 patients that crews have been late, on average, according to the figures.

Ambulance crews should still reach those patients, irrespective of location, within eight minutes in 75 per cent of calls.

The trust's board of director was told the size of the potential penalty by its director of finance.

Rupert Davies said: "It could be two per cent of our A&E budget."

In the latest average response times, crews are missing the target by around 15 and 20 seconds.

The trust has now been warned if it does not address this failure by the end of the year, it could be fined by health regulator Monitor.

Figures are not yet ready for the final quarter of the year, but it is not anticipated that the trust will meet the targets on average.

That is despite exceeding targets for the most serious category. At the meeting of the board, bosses asked that the trust investigate whether crews were mistakenly being over-zealous in categorising more calls in the most serious category and in so doing, affecting their average across the second highest category.

The trust has reported to Monitor to say it is taking action to remedy the missed targets nevertheless, including recruiting new paramedics. Officials have said they would recruit up to 280 student paramedics over the coming months.

They are also using fewer rapid response vehicles in favour of double-crew ambulances.