The NHS is spending almost £80million a year hiring private ambulances to help it cope with an unprecedented number of 999 calls.
Figures from the ten ambulance trusts in England show that the bill reached £78.4million in 2016/17, a 22 per cent increase on the £64.2million spent in 2014/15.
But experts are worried about the standard of care and overall safety at some of these private firms.
Earlier this year employees at one private ambulance firm said they had been given just an hour’s ‘blue light’ training.
Ambulance services are struggling to respond to a record number of calls on top of a national shortage of paramedics.
There were almost ten million 999 calls in 2016/17 and the total is going up by 5 per cent every year.
Ambulance services are struggling to respond to a record number of calls on top of a national shortage of paramedics. There were almost ten million 999 calls in 2016/17
But approximately one in 14 paramedic posts are vacant and many ambulance trusts are having to recruit from Eastern Europe and Australia.
On top of this, ambulances are increasingly having to queue up outside A&E units waiting to offload patients, meaning they cannot respond to incoming calls.
These latest figures for spend on private ambulances were obtained by the Press Association news agency using Freedom of Information requests.
All ten ambulance services provided figures on how much they had spent over the past three years on private ambulances to help them answer 999 calls and transport people to hospital.
The total bill for 2016/17 was slightly lower than for 2015/16, which was £79.7million. This may be because ambulance trusts are under more pressure to slash their outgoings to meet savings targets.
Not all trusts reduced their spending. The bill for South Central Ambulance Service was £16.3million in 2016/17, up by a quarter in a year, while the bill for the East of England Ambulance Service was just over £14million, double the amount from 2015/16.
Private ambulances include those hired from local firms as well as charities, including the Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance.
An investigation by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme in January raised serious concerns about the Private Ambulance Service in Basildon, Essex.
Staff said they had just one hour’s training on how to drive ambulances with blue lights and sirens and claimed many of the equipment was in poor condition.
Private ambulances include those hired from local firms as well as charities, including the Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance. NHS England claimed the new system would free up ambulances for the most seriously ill patients who are unconscious or have stopped breathing
Dr Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&E doctors, said: ‘It is concerning that trusts are having to use part of their budget for private ambulances, and serves to highlight the current levels of demand emergency departments are facing.
‘They [private firms] may use less qualified staff or staff whose qualifications aren’t regulated or restricted. They may be poorly equipped, have poor clinical governance, poor infection prevention, and a lack of or inappropriate equipment.’
Jonathan Street, spokesman for the College of Paramedics, said ambulance staff were ‘under heavy pressure due to growing numbers of 999 calls’.
In July, NHS bosses announced that they were overhauling ambulance response times and scrapping the eight minute target.
Heart attack and stroke victims will typically now have to wait 18 minutes, although in some cases longer than 40 minutes.
NHS England claimed the new system would free up ambulances for the most seriously ill patients who are unconscious or have stopped breathing.
A spokesman for the Independent Ambulance Association said the main reasons for a rise in private ambulance use in the past two years were ‘staff shortages in NHS ambulance trusts combined with continued increases in demand’.
He said there were several benefits of using independent firms, including flexibility and good value for money because ‘it’s cheaper for the NHS than paying overtime’.
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘Occasionally, ambulance trusts use other providers including St John Ambulance to help with spikes in demand, and these providers are subject to the same rigorous safety and quality inspections as NHS ambulances.’
Justin Madders, a Labour health spokesman, said: ‘Ambulance services are under more pressure than ever before because of the neglect of this Tory Government.
‘The rise in the use of private ambulances is a sign of the unsustainable demands which ministers are making on the NHS.
‘A&E pressures are causing queues outside hospitals, while a chronic shortage of paramedics is stretching services even thinner.
‘Across the country ambulance staff are working round the clock to do their best for patients but the Government have failed to give them the support and resources they need.’