London Ambulance Service will no longer respond to every 999 call as it battles to cope with the busiest winter in its history.
Up to 1,000 Londoners a week with non-life-threatening conditions will not be sent an ambulance.
Jason Killens, director of operations for London Ambulance Service, said: “We will tell them, ‘We don’t believe you need an emergency service. You have got a number of options to access the health system. Maybe go and see your GP, go and see a pharmacist or call 111.’ Therefore that ambulance is available to go to sicker patients quicker.”
Ambulance chiefs expect the number of life-threatening calls to soar from 1,200 to 1,800 a day and have drawn up a crisis plan to stop crews attending the lowest priority cases.
For the past four months the service, which attends about 3,000 incidents a day, has failed to hit the NHS target of getting to 75 per cent of all “category A” cases within eight minutes. It fears it will miss the eight-minute target for the whole year for the first time in a decade — putting it at risk of a £10 million penalty.
These “red” calls include where the patient is in cardiac arrest, unconscious, having an asthma attack or suffering stabbing or gunshot wounds. Less serious calls have a target attendance from 20 minutes to an hour.
Its winter plan will mean that the 150 people a day who effectively misuse the emergency service by calling 999 when suffering from “coughs, colds, splinters and toothache” will be told to seek help elsewhere. Ambulances will no longer be sent automatically when requested by police and GPs or to transfer patients between hospitals.
Mr Killens said: “The public in London need to help us to help them by only using their ambulance service when they genuinely need an emergency ambulance.
“We are not going to be saying we are not coming out to someone with a broken leg or someone with breathing difficulties.”
