Huge surge of 999 calls to London Ambulance Service revealed in new documentary

Emergency response: Pete Dalton from London Ambulance Service features in the BBC's Ambulance documentary
BBC/Dragonfly/Glenn Dearing
Ross Lydall @RossLydall27 September 2016

The unprecedented demand being placed on the London Ambulance Service by a soaring number of 999 calls is revealed in a major TV documentary tonight.

Emergency “surge” procedures are being used on a weekly basis to “ration” crews to ensure the service is still able to respond to life-threatening cases.

This means other callers, including elderly people who have fallen, typically have to wait more than an hour before help arrives.

At one stage during filming, a spike in incidents meant there were only 32 ambulances left for 8.5 million Londoners.

One call centre manager admitted: “We are struggling to provide a safe response to London. We have to start making sure we are getting to the sickest quickest. We have to say ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ to those who aren’t as seriously injured.”

The number of 999 calls received by LAS has increased by 50 per cent in a decade to 1.8 million in 2015/16.

Saving lives: Chelsey Pike from LAS features in the BBC's Ambulance documentary
LAS/Tim Saunders

The three-part BBC1 documentary, Ambulance, shows a day in May where “surge purple enhanced” is declared after a series of major incidents.

The same crisis level, which raises the threshold before an ambulance is dispatched, was declared on 17 further occasions in the following four months, the Evening Standard has learned.

On another occasion, the control room appeals to crews completing jobs to make themselves available as quickly as possible after eight major trauma calls are received simultaneously.

“I’m afraid the cupboard is bare,” one dispatcher admits.

“You do think to yourself that absolutely every resident of London has picked up the phone.”

The 100-strong control room deals with an average of 56 attempted suicides or drug overdoses, 63 road collisions and 28 cardiac arrests a day.

About 380 emergency vehicles are available, including fast-response cars, motorbikes and cycle paramedics.

Of 24 cardiac arrests on one day of filming, crews manage to save a quarter of patients, including a 62-year-old man who collapsed in a GP surgery after feeling unwell while walking his dog.

Advanced paramedic Pete Dalton is shown being called to an explosion in an Orthodox Jewish area of Stoke Newington where multiple burns casualties are reported.

While London’s Air Ambulance medics deal with a man feared dead inside, he quickly checks all three casualties outside the building before focusing on the most seriously injured, a badly burned man who has been placed in the back of a Hatzola charity ambulance.

Concerned the man’s burned airways will quickly swell up, he administers ketamine before ordering the patient’s immediate transfer to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel.

“I’m sure Pete will be watching him like a hawk all the way there,” says advanced paramedic dispatcher Chelsey Pike.

The chief executive of LAS, Dr Fionna Moore, admitted the documentary showed a “service under pressure” but whose staff were still able to offer good care and treat patients compassionately.

She hoped that it would help educate the public not to call 999 unnecessarily. Last November, the service was placed in special measures after the NHS watchdog rated it as “inadequate”.

Dr Moore told the Standard: “I think the average viewer will see that we are busy.

“I think it’s also a good opportunity for them to reflect on how best to use the ambulance service, because we will always respond as quickly as we can to life-threatening emergencies.”

Ambulance starts tonight at 9pm on BBC1.

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