Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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To ask the Minister for Health if, in view of changes to ambulance services across the country over the last two years, he will confirm that the response time target of 19 minutes for ECHO and DELTA calls is being reached and if not, the effect this is likely to have on health and safety issues; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7436/13]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The National Ambulance Service is not a static service. The NAS deploys its emergency resources in a dynamic manner and works on an area and national, rather than a local, basis.The dynamic deployment of ambulance resources ensures that the nearest appropriate resource within a region is mobilised to the an incident.

For dynamic deployment of emergency resources within a region to be effective, those resources must be available to be used as efficiently as possible. Following a referral to the Labour Court under the Public Service Agreement, the NAS is progressing a number of efficiencies arising from the Court's ruling, including more efficient rostering and the removal of overtime built in to rosters.New rosters are now in place and are operating successfully.The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has developed key performance indicators (KPIs) for pre-hospital emergency care, which classify 999 emergency calls by clinical status. Clinical Status 1 Echo calls involve life-threatening emergencies of cardiac or respiratory origin, while Clinical Status 1 Delta calls involve life-threatening emergencies other than cardiac or respiratory. The target times for responding to Echo and Delta calls are 7 minutes 59 seconds by a first responder (a person trained in minimum basic life support and use of a defibrillator) and 18 minutes 59 seconds for a patient-carrying vehicle. With effect from January 2012, HIQA set the target for first responders to meet the response time (7 minutes 59 seconds) in 75% of cases. From January 2013 the target for patient-carrying vehicles is to meet the Clinical Status 1 ECHO incidents response time (18 minutes 59 seconds) in 85% of cases.

The NAS has been taking a number of steps to improve emergency responses. These include development of a Performance Improvement Action Plan, an intermediate care service for non-emergency patient transfers, to release emergency resources for emergency use, the national control centre reconfiguration project and a trial emergency aeromedical service.

In light of the above, and following a review of the validity of time-based KPIs, it is considered, in line with international views, that clinical outcomes would be more appropriate as performance indicators. Accordingly, work has begun on their development.I also welcome the fact that use of clinical indicators will enable a focus on Clinical Status 1 (Echo and Delta) calls.

In relation to the specific queries raised by the Deputy, as these are service matters, they have been referred to the HSE for direct reply.