FOI 25-086 Ambulance Priorities
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 25-086 Ambulance Priorities
- Request Date
- 10 Feb 2025
- Response Date
- 24 Feb 2025
- Information Requested
On Monday 12th February 2024, two ambulances were dispatched from Forth Valley ambulance service, originally to 22 Ochil Street, Tillicoultry, FK13 6EJ, at 1336 and 1349. Both of these were diverted to 'higher priority calls'. The attendance at the aforementioned address in Tillicoultry was for a suspected (and later confirmed) stroke. I would like to know what medical problems or concerns caused the divert please.
- Response
Under Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 personal or third party information is exempt under section 38(1b). The Scottish Ambulance Service has a duty under data protection to avoid directly or indirectly releasing information that could make an incident identifiable.
It is for this reason we cannot provide information on the two specific ambulances in your request.
The Scottish Ambulance Service is a national service and ambulances are dispatched to incidents depending on the demand and capacity.
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
