2,500 patients ‘at risk’ every year over shortage of ambulances

THE lives of up to 2,500 emergency patients are put at risk every year in Dublin because an overstretched service has no ambulances available.

Emergency ambulances in the greater Dublin area are provided for jointly by Dublin Fire Brigade and the East Coast Area Health Board.

However, a log of the number of calls for which neither service has an available ambulance predicts almost 2,500 patients will be forced to wait unnecessarily this year.

Last June, Dublin Fire Brigade chiefs began to register calls which had to be queued, and to date, are logging about 200 such incidents monthly.

Dublin Fire Brigade SIPTU representative Tony McDonnell has repeatedly called for additional ambulances, saying the number of fire brigade ambulances have not been increased from 11 since 1985.

In addition to those vehicles, the health board operates its own ambulances, bringing the maximum number of available emergency ambulances to 16 during the busiest night shift.

“If a call comes in and all ambulances are out, the people are going to have to wait. That could be anything from one minute to 20 minutes,” Mr McDonnell said, adding that lives were being put at risk continuously through lack of resources.

“That could be very serious depending on the patient that’s left waiting. If you are patient number 2000 and you have a heart attack, then that’s very serious. It’s a numbers game. It’s gambling with people’s lives,” he said.

The chief ambulance officer of the Eastern Regional Ambulance Service, Pat McCreanor, questioned the figures and insisted the present system was adequate.

“If there were 2,500 people waiting for ambulances, then that would be a major problem,” he said, adding that while logged as unavailable one moment, an ambulance could become available after just a matter of seconds.

He said it was the intention of the Eastern Regional Ambulance Service to integrate the control room operations of Dublin Fire Brigade and the health board to streamline efficiency and provide a better service.

Currently both control rooms are in the same building but continue to operate individually.

“What I would be looking to achieve, with the co-operation of SIPTU and IMPACT, is an integrated control room. If we had a unified control room we would be able to manage the combined resources we have much better,” Mr McCreanor said.

He said there were no immediate plans to increase the number of ambulances available, but did not discount the possibility for the future.

“We will always review the adequacy of the number of ambulances. I have no difficulty in discussing ambulance resources based on evidence-based statistics. I don’t think anyone could say at any stage that we won’t require more ambulances,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said nobody was available for comment last night.