FOI 25-037 Low Body Temperature Incidents Dec 2024
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 25-037 Low Body Temperature Incidents Dec 2024
- Request Date
- 20 Jan 2025
- Response Date
- 13 Feb 2025
- Information Requested
Please find below the following request for information to be considered under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 in relation to ambulance callout requests: 1. How many people aged 50 and over, in Scotland called for an ambulance for when a patient's temperature was recorded as below 35 degrees and above 10 degrees a. between the period of 1 December – 31 December 2024 (please could you state the number of calls received for each NHS board area)? 2. Of these people attended, how many were people living with dementia?
- Response
Please see the attached sheet detailing the number of patients aged 50 and over attended and conveyed to hospital broken down by each NHS Health Board. The patients indicated in the count presented with a temperature reading of below 35 degrees but above 10 degrees. The Scottish Ambulance Service does not use the definition of hypothermia and cannot confirm hypothermia in the numbers provided.
These numbers have been provided for 1st December 2024 – 31st December 2024
The patient report form completed by crews when attending a patient has an ‘Additional Factors’ field; this is where crews can note ‘Dementia’ – this is not a mandatory field. The Scottish Ambulance service has a duty, under the Data Protection Act to avoid directly or indirectly revealing any personal details. The numbers for incidents with the parameters detailed above with the additional factor of Dementia are too low to report on.
IMPORTANT FOR INTERPRETING THIS INFORMATION
This information has been provided in two tables as a new clinical system is being phased in. This phased system has been in place since June 24 and involves a only portion of Scotland. There is the possibility that that an incident from the Terrapace 3 system could be counted in the Terrapace 2 system and therefore the figures in the table should NOT be added together.
For the given data, you will see that some of the figures are shown as, five or less than five, please note that this figure has been suppressed because the statistical value is less than five. The Scottish Ambulance service has a duty, under the Data Protection Act to avoid directly or indirectly revealing any personal details. It is therefore widely understood that provision of statistics on small numbers, five or less are statistically suppressed upon disclosure.
- Response Documents
