Ambulance responses to be cut by 10% in Buckinghamshire
Despite a rise of 8.2 per cent in ambulance call outs in Buckinghamshire last year, and increasing demand for paramedics, NHS chiefs have announced their intention to reduce ambulances by 10 per cent across the region.
An authority spokesperson reported that many call outs don’t need an ambulance so Buckinghamshire NHS bosses hope to free up crews by diverting less serious category C calls to the NHS Direct’s health advice line. This will be achieved through nurses working on call desks to improve the ‘categorisation of emergency calls’, filtering out those that do not need an ambulance and improving response times for those that do.
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