West Midlands Ambulance Service answers 999 calls in two seconds

Staff at WMAS emergency operations centres in Brierley Hill and Stafford have answered more than 1.3m calls this year

Emergency calls for an ambulance are being answered within two seconds in the West Midlands, bosses say.

Figures show 999 calls have totalled 1,365,117 this year, West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) revealed.

Despite the huge volume of emergency calls, call answering time had not faltered, a spokesperson said.

A response in two seconds - at centres in Brierley Hill and Stafford - was a remarkable effort, said Jeremy Brown, director of WMAS.

"This has displayed, once again, the dedication and commitment our team puts into every single shift to deliver outstanding patient care, in what has been a significantly testing time for the service," he explained.

"We are at the starting point of a patient's journey and need to do everything we possibly can to give the best care to our patients in their hour of need."

Seven minute target

Figures released as part of NHS England's Ambulance Quality Indicators data has shown the trust took an average of eight minutes and 28 seconds to respond to category one patients last month.

This includes those with a life-threatening condition, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest.

Across England, all ambulance services have a target of responding to the most serious of calls within seven minutes.

It was the third fastest ambulance service in this category across the country, behind North East which had a response time of seven minutes and nine seconds, and London's seven minutes and 22 seconds.

For patients in the sub-group of category 1T, in which patients were transported by an ambulance service emergency vehicle, the average response time was nine minutes and three seconds.

When responding to category 2 patients, those in a serious condition such as a stroke or suffering chest pain, West Midlands Ambulance Service responded in an average time of 46 minutes and 53 seconds.

WMAS serves a population of 5.6 million people across Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Coventry, Birmingham and Black Country.

The ambulance service is set to launch a new campaign - Is the Patient Breathing? - this week, with the aim of raising awareness of what happens behind the scenes of 999 calls.