South Central Ambulance inquiry after Telegraph report

Trainees were told there was a shortage of paramedics, meaning ambulances were standing idle

An ambulance service has launched an inquiry after an undercover reporter claimed its non-emergency 111 call centre was failing patients.

Telegraph journalist Lyndsey Telford recorded a call-taker at South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) saying they had all "killed someone indirectly".

Another employee was filmed explaining how ambulance shortages meant seriously ill patients were being left waiting.

The service said it wanted to assure the public its system was safe.

Ms Telford, who successfully applied for a job at the 111 call centre in Bicester, Oxfordshire, recorded conversations with staff during a one-month training course.

She was trained to use the service's Pathways computer system, which uses a series of questions to assess the seriousness of the patient's condition.

'We're covered'

During one recording, her training mentor can be heard saying: "You can get out of sending ambulances with chest pain quite easily... You can get people to say 'no' to almost anything if you ask it in a certain way."

The mentor added: "One way or another, everyone in this room has killed someone indirectly because of what we've done but we're covered because it's all recorded."

In another conversation, a trainer reveals he caught a former dispatcher altering ambulance response times to hit targets.

The ambulance service's director of strategy James Underhay said: "We take the issues and points raised by the undercover reporter very seriously and as a result of this we have launched an internal investigation to review the allegations.

"With regard to our NHS 111 services, we would like to reassure members of the public that [we] use a safe and nationally prescribed call-taking and clinical assessment system, NHS Pathways, which assists us in ensuring that patients in a life-threatening or serious condition are treated as a priority."

The call centre handles calls from Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire.