Ambulances Spend ‘Significant’ Time Attending Unnecessary Prison Callouts: Watchdog

Ambulance services are spending “significant” time attending medical emergencies in prisons that are then “cancelled” or “not serious enough,” a health safety watchdog has found. An investigation by the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) has heard that the number of emergency 999 calls from prisons varies between 1 and 40 per week. One NHS trust said that in 2023 it received approximately 5,000 calls from prisons across its region. The HSSIB report found that approximately 25 percent of calls were stood down prior to dispatch. “We estimate that unnecessary 999 calls from prisons use 1,250 hours of ambulance crew time per year. This hinders both the prison and emergency services and has a knock-on effect for people in the community waiting for an ambulance,” the HSSIB said on social media platform X....