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Wales’ ambulance service is the only one in the UK to see an improvement in the time it takes ambulances to reach dying and seriously ill patients.

Of the UK’s 13 ambulance services, the Welsh Ambulance Service is the only one meeting the target to reach patients with life-threatening conditions within eight minutes, new data shows.

The latest performance figures for October show 77.1% of emergency responses by the Welsh Ambulance Service to red calls (immediately life-threatening) arrived within eight minutes, compared to 68.7% in October 2015. The target is 65%.

Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board was the best performing health board in Wales for October, with 81.4% of emergency responses to the most critical 999 calls arriving within eight minutes.

And The Welsh Ambulance Service has also met the eight-minute target in every month since October last year, when new changes were made in the way 999 calls are prioritised.

Response time targets were scrapped for all except the most serious cases under the changes introduced in Wales.

About 40% of calls received by the Welsh Ambulance Service applied to the eight minute target before the changes, but now the eight minute target applies to only 4 to 5% of calls received designated red under the new system.

Richard Lee, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s director of operations welcomed the latest figures for October saying the trust continue to deliver high quality care to patients across Wales.

Mr Lee said: “We have exceeded our target to reach a minimum of 65 per cent of RED – immediately life threatening call in less than eight minutes.

“The average response time to a RED call in October was four minutes and 51 seconds. Our secondary triage team prevented 1062 ambulance dispatches in October.

“As we enter the winter period we continue to work with our Health Board colleagues to ensure that we get to patients across Wales as quickly as possible.”

A Welsh Government spokesperson said the figures showed Wales is leading the way in the UK for speed of response to acutely ill patients, meeting the national target in every month in the first year of the pilot.

The spokesperson added: “Since the introduction of our new clinical response model, the Welsh Ambulance Service has gone from strength to strength with more focus on prioritising patients in most need of care, delivering real benefits to the people of Wales. This is testament to the innovative thinking and commitment of call handlers, ambulance clinicians and management.

“The clinically driven changes are enabling patients to receive the right response based on their clinical need and it is encouraging to see other parts of the UK taking note of our progress.

“We have had international interest in our model and the Scottish Ambulance Service have announced they will shortly implement a very similar system.”

Nigel Lee, director of secondary care for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board added: “We are very pleased that the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust (WAST) achieves good response times for patients, and this is regularly over 80% in the Betsi Cadwaladr catchment area.”

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