Patients in Wales who need an ambulance "may need to wait longer in the coming weeks" due to increasing demand, staff training and the withdrawal of the military, an NHS boss has warned. Jason Killens, chief executive of the Welsh Ambulance Service, confirmed that the Armed Forces would stop volunteering as emergency drivers on March 30.
However there are calls to keep the military in post for the time being in the wake of worsening performance figures which show that barely half (52.5%) of immediately life-threatening "Red" calls were reached within the target time of eight minutes in January. The Welsh Government-set target of 65% has not been reached in 18 months.
The ambulance service is also experiencing significant problems with transferring patients into A&E departments in a timely manner, also known as handover delays. In February a total of 23,215 hours were "lost" by ambulances waiting outside hospitals for more than 15 minutes - the most ever recorded in a single month.
