A surge in the number of patients calling their own ambulances - many for trivial reasons - is holding up vital rapid response to life-threatening cases, an ambulance service boss has warned.

Brian Allen, manager of the East Surrey locality of Surrey ambulance service, has the local NHS watchdog, that the service was under huge pressure and barely hitting target on the most urgent cases.

He has cited headaches, minor falls and problems not linked to health at all, as some of the things people believe warrant a 999 call.

After reporting the problem to East Surrey Community Health Council (CHC) last Wednesday (January 22), he told the Life: "There are 30 to 40 per cent of patients that could be offset to alternative referral sites because they don't need to see a doctor in A&E."

"Sometimes people call 999 when they have a headache. We have to send an ambulance when people call 999."

He told the CHC that if the trend continues the Surrey Ambulance Service NHS Trust will fail to meet the Government annual target, currently that 75 per cent of Category A cases must be answered within eight minutes. Next year the Government proposes to incresae this target to 90 per cent.

Mr Allen, who is based at Redhill Station on Pendleton Road, told the Life that paramedics are forced to hang around in the department waiting for their stretchers, and for the patient hand-over to be completed.

He spent ten hours in East Surrey Hospital's A&E department last week helping to manage the effects of the rise.

He said this was compounded by a shortage of nurses and beds, which in turn means paramedics are not freed up to respond to the next call.

He said: "Our vehicles are held up in A&E because there aren't enough beds to transfer patients to. The vehicles are being blocked at the acute sites because the patient is on our bed.

"In some cases the patient may be in a wheelchair and we still can't effect the hand-over because there's not enough nurses."

The reason for the surge in 999 self-referrals - which means patients whose ambulance was not ordered by their GP - could be a combination of lack of public education as to what constitutes a genuine emergency, and a problem with out-of-hours GP services.

Mr Allen has also called for the public to think about the effects of calling an ambulance in a non-emergency.

A spokesman for East Surrey Hospital said the Hospital Trust has recorded the rise, and added that information is being shared with GP practices.

January 30, 2003 11:00