Every year the East Midlands Ambulance Service receives thousands of time-wasting calls – and now an FOI request has revealed the most ridiculous.
The service provides emergency response for 4.8 million people and categorises calls it receives into three types.
A ‘right call’ is classed as when someone is in a life threatening condition, an ‘inappropriate call’ is when someone has a non-urgent health problem.
Finally a ‘wrong call’ – also known as hoax calls – involve a patient who doesn’t exist or a condition which is not medically important.
Now the service has released its ten most bizarre ‘wrong calls’ of 2015 to its Emergency Operations Centres in Nottingham and Lincoln.
The list was revealed in a response the service made to a Freedom of Information Act request.
The calls include;
- Popcorn stuck in-between teeth
- A patient wanting to be carried upstairs because their stair lift was broken
- Milk that had gone past its sell-by date
- Late having a period
- A broken finger nail which had been swallowed and concern was raised as to whether the patient would choke
- A hamster had bitten somebody’s finger
- Someone had dropped their keys down a drain
- There was a dead cat outside someone’s house
- A moth was in a patient’s ear
- A broken toe nail
A service spokesman said: “Each call is categorised based on the information given by the caller e.g. a call such as ‘I have popcorn stuck in my teeth’ would lead to the call handler advising the caller that a face to face ambulance response was not required.
“A call for someone with breathing difficulties would be given a high priority category and we would aim to get someone on scene within eight minutes.
“The calls listed in this top ten impact our service because it ties up the Emergency Medical Dispatcher from being able to answer new 999 calls.”
EMAS has taken legal action in the past against persistent time-wasters and the spokesman stressed the importance of only calling 999 in an emergency.
The service, which faces a financial deficit of some £8 million, is currently looking for a new chief executive after the departure of Sue Noyes in March.
Picture: EMAS has been struggling to meet targets
EMAS chairman Pauline Tagg today rejected speculation that the service could be looking into a merger with West Midlands Ambulance Service in order to help it improve.
Ms Tagg said: “I have been having discussions with NHS Improvement to explore opportunities to strengthen our leadership arrangements.
“This will allow us to support the existing team to deliver improved performance, quality and better manage our resources; not a merger with another trust.
“One of these options has involved talking with West Midlands Ambulance Service about the possibility of their Chief Executive, Dr Anthony Marsh, working with EMAS to support us with these challenges.
“This option, and others, are still being explored and discussions have not yet come to a conclusion. It would therefore be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”
