Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 14 March 2018.
I agree entirely that we need a whole-service approach. I'm saying that the whole system is broken and it's the ambulances and paramedics and call centre staff who are having to bear the brunt. And you say you're meeting targets; there are no targets for amber calls and that's a part of the problem.
Behind the statistics, though, we must remember are some truly shocking stories. Let me recount two recent very distressing cases, I'm told, both on Anglesey, both the same day. I can't imagine the distress caused to paramedics dealing with these cases, let alone to those people's families. First, chest pains—red call, surely. An ambulance turns up after an hour and five minutes. The patient has died. Suspected stroke—amber call. An ambulance arrives 10.5 hours later. The patient, again, was dead. The same day.
Let me focus on that second case. It may be the case that whether an ambulance turns up to a suspected stroke patient in eight minutes or 10 minutes doesn't make a difference to the outcome, but surely you agree that waiting hours for such a potentially serious condition to be addressed is unacceptable. Do you accept that removal of any time target for amber calls has forced under-pressure ambulance staff to treat those calls as less of a priority, and patients therefore have been put at risk?