Barbara Howard
27 Nov 2017 · Coroner Joanne Andrews · West Sussex
The coroner's concerns
1. staff vacancies causing shortage of paramedics
“on 19 July 2017 the Chichester and Worthing areas had 30-40 staff vacancies made up of 2 Paramedic [name redacted] roles and 25 paramedic roles. This equated to being 2 ambulances and 1 car short.”
2. failure to contact patient when call exceeds response target
“when a call is not responded to within the national target time, in this case, 30 minutes, then a Clinician should ring the patient to ascertain the priority of the call within the category. On 19 July 2017 this was not done”
3. inadequate audit coverage of calls
“the audit is only about 60% on target”