Ambulance chiefs have been criticised for delaying responses to thousands of patients in the region that includes Brighton and Hove.
Healthwatch Brighton and Hove said that South East Coast Ambulance Service (Secamb) had “jeopardised” the right of patients to receive “expedient critical care”.
The ambulance service had “put very sick patients at risk”, the watchdog said. And it added that the unapproved delays “will have caused distress” even if it was not possible to prove that they had any serious adverse effects on patients.
The delays, which the ambulance service said were designed to speed up response times for the most seriously ill patients, are being investigated by NHS England and the regulator Monitor.
NHS England is due to publish a report about the policy today (Thursday 5 November).
The policy was brought in by ambulance bosses without the knowledge of the ambulance trust’s independent directors. It was also kept from 111 staff, the trusts’s medical director and local health commissioners.
Healthwatch Brighton and Hove said: “People who contact the NHS 999 and 111 services have the right to feel confident that the service they are requesting is reliably organised and run properly.
“This is particularly important for people who are critically ill.
“They need to be able to trust that their call for help is being prioritised and dealt with immediately.”
Healthwatch Brighton and Hove chair Frances McCabe said: “It is of the gravest concern to find out that South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb), who run this service in Brighton and Hove, set up a project that lasted 66 days, that jeopardised this right to expedient critical care and put very sick patients at risk.
“Though the report did not find evidence that the built-in delay to dispatching an ambulance caused serious adverse effects on patients, it might be impossible to know as the pilot was not set up on an evidence base, was not evaluated and did not put in an assessment of risk.
“What we know is that the delays will have caused distress. Anyone who has waited for an ambulance with a seriously ill patient will know that every minute waiting feels like an hour.
“Healthwatch Brighton and Hove supports the calls in the report that ‘Patients and their carers should be present, powerful and involved at all levels of the organisation, including consultation on any projects that are implemented. Their voices should be seen as an asset in monitoring the safety and quality of care.’
“Healthwatch Brighton and Hove will monitor this situation closely on behalf of patients and be active in ensuring people’s voices are heard.”
Hove MP Peter Kyle said: “Patient safety was clearly jeopardised by this unauthorised ‘trial’ the trust operated last year
“ We now need clear accountability on who took the decision to authorise this project and assurances that nobody locally was put at direct harm by being forced to wait longer for an ambulance.”
South East Coast Ambulance Service said: “Last winter, during an extremely busy period, South East Coast Ambulance Service introduced a process to deal with certain calls passed from 111 to the 999 service.
“The purpose of this process was to protect patient safety by ensuring that our most seriously ill patients received the care they needed as quickly as possible.
“There has been some suggestion that this resulted in less serious patients being harmed.
“We would like to make it clear that our investigations to date have found no evidence to support this suggestion.
“Reports published previously around ‘25 deaths’ being investigated are completely inaccurate.
“We would also like to stress that calls which went through this process were not counted towards nationally reported performance figures, as previously set out in our annual report.
“We welcome Monitor’s review of the pilot introduced during the winter of 2014-15 and will work closely with them to establish the facts during their reviews of governance processes, how decisions are made within the trust and the impact on patients.
“We hope Monitor will conclude its review and publish its findings quickly in order that the public can be reassured about the quality of their local ambulance service.”
