The South east Coast Ambulance trust scandal (where the trust fiddled their NHS targets by "reassessing" response times whenever a call came via the 111 number) was exposed by a whistleblowing Paramedic.
He or she has told us more;
To put it simply the trust was also doing some other "reassessments".
Whenever they missed the requirement that an ambulance should arrive within 8 minutes of a call 75% of the time......they changed the rules.
They created an app which told them whether a defibrillator was nearby and if it was.....that counted as if the ambulance had arrived in time, even if it hadn't.
What's worse is that this appears to just be an extension of the NHS rules.
If it's true, all the Ambulance trusts are probably missing their targets and thousands of people are potentially dying unnecessarily.
Here's the full article;
Telegraph.co.uk
Sunday 08 November 2015
NHS accused of 'scandalous' 999 response time policy
Exclusive: Whistleblower from troubled ambulance trust says thousands of calls that appeared to miss eight-minute target are being counted as hit.
By Laura Donnelly, Health Editor
08 Nov 2015
The NHS has been accused of operating a "scandalous" policy that means 999 calls are being recorded as receiving a swift response - even if no help was given.
Thousands of “life threatening” calls which apparently miss the response time target have been retrospectively assessed and counted as a hit regardless of whether the patient was seen by professionals, a whistleblower has told the Daily Telegraph.
It is alleged that the South East Coast Ambulance trust was able to manipulate the figures by proving that equipment used to restart someones heart - put in place in thousands of shopping centres, doctors’ surgeries and village halls – was within 250 metres of the patient, even if their symptoms were completely unrelated.
The 111 number was brought in for people to call if they felt their medical condition was not life threatening.
Ambulance services are supposed to ensure that three quarters of
"life-threatening" calls receive a response in eight minutes.
South East Coast Ambulance Trust is already under investigation for deliberately delaying thousands of “life-threatening” calls which came to them via 111.
Regulators are trying to establish the extent of the harm to up to 20,000 patients who were forced to wait up to twice as long under a secret scheme.
But a whistleblower from the trust has spoken out about his concerns about the separate policy affecting thousands more life-threatening calls.
National NHS guidance about "Red 2" cases - the second most serious level of urgency - says the eight-minute target can be achieved if a response comes from an ambulance, rapid response vehicle or from a "public access defibrillator” with a person trained to use it.
The equipment can be used to try to restart the hearts of those suffering a cardiac arrest.
But the Telegraph has learned that trusts have been allowed to count the targets as being hit as long as the equipment is on hand.
The rule is applied even if the medical emergency could not have been helped by a defibrillator, and no attempt was made to use it.
South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS trust has been accused of retrospectively changing more than 5,600 calls in a year, because a public defibrillator was within 250 metres.
A paramedic whistleblower said a web programme had been deployed to reasess "life-threatening" cases which appeared to have missed the eight-minute target.
If the mapping tool located a nearby defibrillator, the case would be recorded as meeting the eight minute target, he said – whether or not the heart-starting device was used.
These included cases in which the patient had suffered conditions such as strokes or breathing problems, in which a defibrillator would be no help.
The trust said the rule would only apply if the 999 caller had been asked if someone was available to collect the device.
A data report leaked by the paramedic discloses that in the 12 months from April 2014 to March 2015, the “webdefib” tool was applied 5,631 times by the trust.
The classification of such calls as achieved within eight minutes helped the organisation towards the NHS target to achieve this in 75 per cent of “life threatening” cases.
Official figures show that the trust narrowly achieved this last year, with 75.3 per cent of such calls getting a response in eight minutes. Without the reclassification, the target would have been missed.
The paramedic told The Telegraph: “This is a complete scandal, the public would be deeply concerned about this if they knew.”
“Every day in the control centre administrators look at every missed 'red' call to see if a defibrillator was within 250 metres.
They use a mapping tool to see.
"It doesn’t matter if it was used, or even if it could have been used – some of these are people suffering strokes, or breathing problems. This is occurring when a defibrillator has not left the wall where it was mounted and no one has been sent to collect it.”
“We simply should not be doing this,” he added. “We are manipulating data to hide the true picture.”
The use of the protocols meant that calls appeared to be met far earlier than they were, he said.
"In areas - especially rural settings where we frequently miss our 8 minute responses - a defibrillator will be placed, meaning we will always reach our 8 minute response time, even if an ambulance takes 30 minutes to get to scene," he
said.
The revelations follow a string of disclosures about the trust, which is at the centre of a growing scandal.
Last week, an official investigation found up to 20,000 “life threatening” calls were deliberately delayed under a secret policy.
The NHS England report said a failure to monitor the scheme meant it was impossible to say how many patients had come to harm, under the protocols affecting 111 calls.
Regulators have launched a new investigation to try to establish the extent of the harm.
A spokeswoman for the trust denied any manipulation of response times. She said: "Our response time performance is recorded completely in line with the national guidance."
She said the trust understood that under NHS rules, such calls would be treated as met within eight minutes if as an automatic external defibrillator was publicly accessible, and the 999 caller had someone available to fetch it. Such public devices were specifically devised for use by those with no training, she
said.
However, NHS England said the clock should only be stopped if a "fully trained" person and a defibrillator were right by the patient's side.
A spokesman said that if these criteria were met within eight minutes, the response target was achieved - regardless of what turned out to be wrong with the patient or whether the device was used.
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutthenhs.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail
An investigation into deliberate ambulance delays has been branded a "whitewash" after it failed to establish who is to blame for a major NHS scandal.
An eight-day-old baby and a patient suffering an obvious stroke were among up to 20,000 patients whose ambulances were delayed as part of a secret policy by South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust.
For two months, “life threatening” cases referred to them from the 111 phone line were routinely forced to wait twice as long for an ambulance.
The secrecy meant that 111 call handlers assured patients in 'life-threatening' situations that an ambulance was on its way, with no idea that it was not.
NHS England on Thursday published the findings of its investigation into the matter, the findings of which were revealed by the Telegraph earlier this week.