Ambulances in Shropshire sent out to over 30 hoax calls
Ambulance crews have been sent to deal more than 30 calls in Shropshire which have turned out to be a hoax over the past two years, according to new figures.
Data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows paramedics were sent on 34 hoax calls since 2014 – with last year seeing 16 hoax calls.
The data shows that West Midlands Ambulance Service had 15 hoax calls in 2014, 16 the following year and just three to date this year.
It is thought there will be more calls which are a hoax but can't be confirmed as such. Ambulance service bosses today urged people to think long and hard before making a hoax call, warning in the worst case scenario it could lead to another patient's death. Murray MacGregor, spokesman for West Midlands Ambulance Service, said the numbers were thankfully very small compared to the number of calls the service receives every day.
He said: "Any hoax call means vital resources are not able to respond to genuine 999 calls such as cardiac arrest, heart attacks and strokes.
"Ultimately, if paramedics are dealing with a hoax call, a patient could die as a result of us taking longer for us to get there than it would have done.
"We would urge anybody to think very hard before they were foolish enough to make a hoax call to the ambulance service.
"I'd ask them to imagine if it was their loved one getting a slower response as a result of us getting a hoax call.
"We do participate in various events with other emergency services where various issues are highlighted but thankfully the numbers are so tiny which is great."
The hoax call data comes after it was revealed only half of the most serious emergency calls to the ambulance service are responded to in seven minutes.
But the service, which has recently become a pilot for a new way of prioritising calls, said it gets an ambulance to almost all red category emergency calls in the county excluding Telford & Wrekin in just over 16 minutes. At a meeting of Shropshire Council's health and adult social care scrutiny committee, Mark Docherty, director of clinical commissioning and service development at WMAS, said the new system of prioritising calls was to ensure patients got the correct response as quickly as possible.
