Scottish Ambulance Service declared emergency due to increasing pressures

The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) declared an emergency last week as it dealt with increased pressures, the Scottish Government has said.

The service increased its resource escalation action plan (Reap) to level four – the highest available, which reportedly could see leave cancelled and call all available staff to the front line.

But the Government said the service can still urgently treat patients in a critical condition.

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “Patient safety remains our top priority.

“The Scottish Ambulance Service has implemented a level four resource escalation action plan to ensure that all available resources are used to respond to 999 calls.

“Despite continued increased levels of high priority calls, crews responded to 514 of the highest priority calls across Scotland last week in an average time of seven minutes 41 seconds.

“The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that there are no unnecessary delays in transferring patients to hospital and we continue to work closely with health boards and the SAS to maintain a fast response to the most critically unwell.

“We continue to invest in supporting SAS staff and patients, recruiting an additional 1,388 staff since 2020, with further recruitment underway this year.”

The Scottish Ambulance Service said its staff are working “extremely hard”.

A spokesperson added: “We are working with health boards to do everything we can to get our crews back on the road to help patients.

“Our staff are working extremely hard and we continue to prioritise patients who are most critically-ill.

“Patients who are not critically-ill may have to wait longer for an ambulance than usual. We will get to them as quickly as we can.

“We would like to remind people if you need urgent care, but it’s not life-threatening, you can visit NHS Inform online, call NHS 24 on 111, day or night, or your GP during opening hours.”