Ambulance Services: North East
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of workforce shortages on ambulance response times in rural areas of the North East.
Answered by Karin Smyth
North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) is fully staffed at present across their patient-facing roles in emergency care. When vacancies arise, recruitment is targeted in those areas. The NEAS works closely with universities to support the 3-year education programme for paramedics so when jobs are available, they are encouraged to apply. NEAS will also, if required, use overtime, additional hours, bank shifts or local third-party providers should they have any short-term or unplanned shifts not covered to ensure response times and therefore patient care is not affected.
The latest figures show that Category 2 response times in the North East were 20 minutes 51 seconds on average, the fastest in the country.
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