West Midlands Ambulance Service has fastest 999 call answering times in country, new figures show

The local NHS ambulance trust is leading the way when compared with those in other parts of the nation, according to the latest NHS England data.

Nationally, calls were answered within an average of 28 seconds in April, but the average in the West Midlands was just three seconds.

One in 10 callers in the West Midlands was left waiting for longer than five seconds and one in 100 had to wait longer than 31 seconds.

In comparison, those in the South West of the country were typically waiting one minute and 20 seconds.

South Central and South Western ambulance trusts also made one in 100 people wait more than seven minutes that month.

Ambulance services are expected to reach people with the most serious life-threatening illnesses or injuries in an average time of seven minutes and hand all patients over to A&E within 15 minutes of arriving at hospital.

Bosses at West Midlands Ambulance Service say they are "extremely pleased" with the service's call answering speed and it is testament to the hard work of staff.

It comes as a "large number" of new staff have also been recruited to the control rooms.

Jeremy Brown, integrated emergency and urgent care and performance director at WMAS, said: “We all know how important it is to answer 999 calls quickly, particularly in cases of cardiac arrests where every second counts, so for us to have such impressive speed of call answering is extremely pleasing.

"It is testament to the hard work of everyone in our control rooms for the incredible levels of hard work and dedication they show every single day.

"We have also recently recruited a large number of new staff to our control rooms who have all settled in extremely well and are helping play a big part in the way we perform.

"My thanks go out to the whole team with special thanks to the training team, the mentors, call supervisors, duty management teams and all the call taking staff for the huge part they are playing in helping to save as many lives as possible.”

It comes as last month WMAS's nursing director Mark Doherty pinpointed a date – August 17 – as the service's "Titanic moment" when ambulances will not be able to pick patients up.

Patients suffering from heart attacks, strokes and blood clots are "dying every day" due to ambulances being stuck outside hospitals for several hours, he said.

He told a WMAS trust board meeting: "The issue is immediate and urgent. We have been raising this issue for several years.

"I spent most of the last two weeks visiting families where we caused harm. I can't carry on doing that, and I am not willing too. Someone, somewhere has got to stop this happening.

"We cannot carry on as an NHS causing patients harm. Some die; I can't carry on trying to explain something that is avoidable.

"This is the biggest problem facing the NHS right now. Last April we reported two serious incidents but this April we reported 23."

The meeting heard that the majority of serious incidents logged led to a patient's death.