Urgent action must be taken to address the huge deterioration of ambulance turnaround times over the past two years in Sligo and Donegal.
That’s according to Leas Cheann Comhairle, Deputy Pat the Cope Gallagher who’s comments come following information released by Fianna Fáil health spokesperson, Stephen Donnelly.
An Ambulance turnaround times measure’s the time interval from which a ambulance arrives at a hospital, to when the crew is ready to accept another call.
The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) have stated that all hospitals in Ireland should be implementing that 95% of patients are being handed over from an ambulance crew to the emergency department staff in less than 20 minutes.
Letterkenny University hospital only had 9 % of ambulances that managed the 20-minute turnaround.
While in Sligo University Hospital 10.6 % managed to reach the 20-minute target. Deputy Gallagher expresses that the current response times are to low:
