FOI 25-056 Inter Hospital transfers in the Borders
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 25-056 Inter Hospital transfers in the Borders
- Request Date
- 03 Feb 2025
- Response Date
- 03 Mar 2025
- Information Requested
I am requesting information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 regarding ambulance
deployment and response times in the Borders region. Please provide the following information for the
financial years: • April 2020 – March 2021 • April 2021 – March 2022 • April 2022 – March 2023 • April 2023
– March 2024
1. The total number of emergency calls where ambulances based in the Borders were tasked outside their
designated area.
2. The total number of times Borders-based ambulances were sent to and attended emergency calls in the
Lothians.
3. Response times for emergency calls from Peebles, Melrose, Hawick, Kelso, and Chirnside ambulance
stations, including: • Average response time for each station per financial year. • Breakdown of response
times into relevant time categories (e.g., within 8 minutes, 8-15 minutes, over 15 minutes, etc.).
4. The number of hospital transfers carried out from Borders General Hospital to other healthcare facilities
in Scotland, broken down by the ambulance station responsible for the transfer. I look forward to your
response within the statutory timeframe- Response
The Scottish Ambulance Service operates a priority-based system of dispatch to try to ensure that
emergency ambulances are available to respond to the most serious and life-threatening cases in the first
instance. Our Call Handlers utilise a system called Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) to prioritise all
requests for our emergency ambulances. This is a computerised system in which, in response to
information provided by the caller, a coded response level is determined.
The Scottish Ambulance Service is a national service, this means that vehicles based out of the Borders
area can be despatched to incidents out with the area, similarly vehicles out with the Borders area may
attend to incidents within the area depending on the severity of the incident and the demand on the service.
Q1 – Please see the attached sheet, tab 1, table 2; which details the number of incidents attended where
an emergency vehicle in the Sub-Division of the Borders has been tasked out with the area.
Q2 – Please see the attached sheet, tab 1, table 2; which details the number of incidents attended where
an emergency vehicle in the Sub-Division of Lothian has been tasked out with the area.
Q3 – Please see the attached sheet, tab 2; which details the total attended incidents, average response
times, median response times and 90th percentile response times for the Borders Health Board by Scottish
Ambulance Service colour codeIt is important to note – It is not possible to accurately report on response times for Sub-Division
resources. Official response times are calculated from Chief Complaint Established to the First resource
arriving on scene.
The response times show total time and do not factor in possible upgrading or downgrading that may occur
depending on the patient condition. For example, a call may start out as a yellow call, subsequently be
upgraded to a purple call sometime later, but only the total time from the first call received is shown. The
starting point is always set for the colour category first determined, not the final colour category assigned.
Where delays occur, clinical advisors maintain contact with the patient, checking their condition on an
ongoing basis, and upgrading when appropriate.
The Scottish Ambulance Service implemented the Clinical Response Model (CRM) for Emergency 999 calls
in November 2016. The CRM aims to save more lives by more accurately identifying patients with
immediately life-threatening conditions, such as cardiac arrest; and to safely and more effectively send the
right type of resource first time to all patients based on their clinical need.
The model institutes a colour-coded system, which categorises 999 calls in terms of clinical need. Cases
are coded purple, red, amber, yellow and green.
In less urgent cases, call handlers may spend more time with patients to better understand their health
needs and ensure they send the most appropriate resource for their condition and clinical need.
The process is also designed to identify instances when an ambulance is not needed and instead the
patient can be referred to an alternative pathway such as GPs, NHS24 or outpatient services. All calls are
triaged into the following categories:
Purple: Our most critically ill patients. This is where a patient is identified as having a 10% or more chance
of having a cardiac arrest. The actual cardiac arrest rate across this category is approximately 53%.
Red: Our next most serious category where a patient is identified as having a likelihood of cardiac arrest
between 1% and 9.9%, or having a need for resuscitation interventions such as airway management above
2%. Currently the cardiac arrest rate in this category is approximately 1.5%.
Amber: where a patient is likely to need diagnosis and transport to hospital or specialist care. The cardiac
arrest rates for all of these codes is less than 0.5%.
Yellow: a patient who has a need for care but has a very low likelihood of requiring life-saving interventions.
For example, patients who have tripped or fallen but not sustained any serious injury.
Q4 – Please see the attached sheet, tab 3; which details the number of transfers from Borders General
Hospital to other hospitals, broken down by financial year and station carrying out the transfer.
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
