SWINDON’S Ambulance service is the most expensive in the country according to a report by MPs.

Each callout for the Great Western Ambulance NHS Trust (GWAS) costs £216 – compared to £144 in the North West.

The Public Accounts Select Committee said ambulance services had become inefficient. Too many vehicles and staff were sent to some incidents, the committee said, because trusts had been concentrating on hitting response time targets.

The wide variation was because of factors including sickness absence, overtime and back office costs, the MPs said.

Gwas admitted the cost of its callouts was too high, saying this was one of the key reasons it was looking to merge with a neighbouring authority, probably the South West region, to create a larger organisation.

A spokesman said: “There is a reason for this, mainly because we are the smallest ambulance service in the country, spread over a wider area, and that is why we are looking to merge to create economies of scale.”

He said that the trust was hitting its targets in terms of performance.

“Everyone recognises that there is a need in the current climate to provide better value for money, and the main thing will be getting economies of scale.”

Earlier this year, the Government introduced a wider set of targets for ambulance trusts, which had previously been measured on response time alone.

This was welcomed by Public Accounts committee chairman Margaret Hodge, but she said: “There are other areas of inefficiency still to be tackled.

“For instance, the cost of responding to calls varies widely across different ambulance trusts, from £144 per call in the North West to £216 per call in Great Western.

“Too often, ambulances are kept waiting outside A&E, with one in five patients forced to wait more than the recommended 15 minutes to be accepted by the hospital.

“The whole of the emergency care system needs to become more integrated to prevent this happening, so that patients can get treatment faster and the ambulances can get back out to help others sooner.”

The MPs also raised concerns about the accountability of ambulance services and the ‘vagueness’ of the Government’s controversial reorganisation of the NHS.

Ms Hodge added: “It is not yet clear who will commission services, who will be responsible for improving efficiency, nor which body will intervene to protect 999 services if an ambulance service gets into financial difficulty, seriously underperforms or even fails.”

England’s 11 ambulance services handled 7.9 million emergency calls last year. They have been told to find four per cent efficiency savings this year.

but it’s still one of the world’s best

GWAS has again been recognised as one of the best emergency services in the world for the way that it handles the growing number of 999 calls.

GWAS is the only emergency service in Europe to be accredited as a Centre of Excellence four times in a row – dating back to 2001 – by the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED).

The accolade acknowledges the effective way the trust deals with 999 calls coming into its emergency operations centres (EOCs).

Most emergency calls are handled by GWAS’s EOC in north Bristol, but the EOCs in Gloucester and Devizes also pick up calls during busy periods.

Accreditation as a Centre of Excellence by the IAED is based on a stringent assessment of the trust’s procedures and performance around handling 999 calls.

This includes listening to three per cent of all emergency calls selected at random to ensure call-handlers are properly identifying the clinical nature of the emergency, and providing the right advice to the caller while an ambulance response is en route.

Andy Parker, GWAS head of EOCs, said: “This latest reaccreditation is testament to the hard work of everyone involved with answering 999 calls.

“Clearly that includes our team of dedicated call-handlers who are the first point of contact for anyone phoning 999 with a medical emergency – often in very stressful situations.

“But there are also many other people who play a vital role in terms of ongoing training and ensuring all our process are working properly – all with the view of providing rapid, effective help for patients.”