East Midlands Ambulance Service has been fined £3.5 million after missing key response time targets for patients with life-threatening injuries.
Of the 10 trusts in the country, East Midlands Ambulance Service was last by a considerable margin for hitting the 19-minute target for such calls.
The trusts are expected to hit the target of at least 95 per cent but East Midlands came in at 91.8 per cent. The only other trust to miss its target was East of England with 94.3.
In a statement East Midlands Ambulance Service said: “We are on the right track; our performance is improving and together with the support from our commissioners and colleagues at hospitals who are working hard to improve turnaround times.
“We will continue to make good progress and to deliver quality clinical care to people in an emergency situation.”
Of its service in Lincolnshire the trust said: “In Lincolnshire, we provided 54,509 journey’s to hospital for patients reported to be in a life-threatening condition.
“In this county during the year if we had got to an average 19 calls a day, eight minutes and ten seconds faster we would have met the (A19) standard.”
EMAS is soon to release plans to cut the number of ambulance stations from 65 to 28, creating nine “super-hubs”, 19 smaller stations and 108 community points. EMAS believes the changes will improve response times.