East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EMAS) has this evening declared a critical incident (as at 18.00 hours, Monday 6 January 2025).
EMAS has put out more ambulance resource than ever before. However, the combination of significant patient demand, pressure within local hospitals, and flooding across the East Midlands, have led to this level of escalation.
Declaring a critical incident includes a formal ask of partner services to take immediate action to help mitigate the risk for people in our communities, including:
- Rapid release of ambulances from hospital departments. We appreciate this will be challenging for hospital colleagues however, we need to ensure we have emergency ambulances available to respond to people waiting in the community where life is at threat.
- From the morning, local NHS Clinical Hubs to take Category 3 calls (see additional notes) from EMAS and provide support and/or a local alternative NHS pathway for these patient. This allows EMAS to focus on responding to Category 1 (life-threatening) and Category 2 (serious) calls.
- All Category 3 calls (see additional information below) from NHS 111 receive a clinical validation from DHU Healthcare (the provider of 111 services) before it is sent for an ambulance.
A spokesperson said:
‘Like many across the NHS, EMAS colleagues have been working tirelessly to respond to patient need. All internal actions and options to mitigate risk have been exhausted; therefore, a critical incident has been called to ensure mutual aid to support delivery of emergency and urgent patient care.
‘The public is asked to help by using NHS services wisely and by taking regular medication to manage long-term conditions. If your illness or injury is not immediately life-threatening, please seek alternative care via a pharmacy, urgent treatment centre, or general practitioner (including out of hours services) – visit the NHS website for services near you. Given the additional weather-related pressures being responded to by emergency services across the East Midlands, please act responsibly and do not take unnecessary risks.’
More informationÂ
In response to pressures in the NHS system and on ambulance services, on Tuesday 26 November 2024, EMAS escalated to Resource Escalation Action Plan (REAP) Level 4 – the highest level which indicates a potential for failures within the service. The service has remained at REAP Level 4 since then.
The Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response framework describes a critical incident as: ‘any localised incident where the level of disruption results in the organisation temporarily or permanently losing its ability to deliver critical services, patients may have been harmed or the environment is not safe requiring special measures and support from other agencies, to restore normal functions.
NHS England Ambulance Response Programme states Category 3 calls are for urgent calls such as abdominal pains, and which will include patients to be treated in their own home. The aim is to respond to these patients at least nine out of 10 times within 120 minutes.
