Ambulances told to reach critically-ill patients within 8 minutes

STRICT new ambulance target travel times which could drastically improve the pre-hospital emergency care sector have been announced.

In an ambitious new plan by the Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA), all HSE, private sector and fire brigade ambulances have been given the target of reaching critically-ill patients within eight minutes.

Under the system which is set to be introduced by the second half of the year, a target of 75% of “first responder” call-outs for incidents such as heart attacks or life-threatening respiratory arrests must reach their patient within the timeframe.