Ambulance resource shortage delays urgent patient transfers
East Midlands Ambulance Service received 2 coroners' reports about this hazard between 26 May 2016 and 4 Feb 2020.
They came from 2 different coroners in 2 coroner areas. A similar concern was raised again 1 time after the first warning.
A published response was found for 1 of the 1 earlier reports, stating 2 specific actions.
The story, report by report
Spacing grows with the time between reports.
“I was advised that EMAS has had to invoke such a Plan (to at least level 3) for 9 out of the last 12 months.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ East Midlands Ambulance Service responded, stating 2 specific actions.Response (PDF) ↗Response (PDF) ↗
“In 2015/16, the trust carried out a significant recruitment campaign and educated 350 whole time equivalent frontline posts.”
Web search (Tavily): Evidence found that the action was carried out
East of England Ambulance: Plan to recruit 350 staff ↗“EMAS has taken the CQC findings seriously and value the additional support from other NHS organisations following the CQC Quality Summit. With their input EMAS can progress areas that cannot be fixed quickly, or that are not within EMAS' immediate control.”
Stated timescale: 2016/17
- 3 years 8 months laterClosely relatedConfidence 0.90 · higha different coroner
“there is a risk of future death if urgent transfers are not available to acutely ill patients due to resourcing issues.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ East Midlands Ambulance Service responded.Response (PDF) ↗
- All reports to East Midlands Ambulance Service
Each row is one judged link between an earlier and a later report. Open a row to read both quotes, found word for word in the originals.
2016 → 2020Gordon Gillott3 years 8 months after Peter Scott · different coronerClosely relatedConfidence 0.90 · high
Closely relatedConfidence 0.90 · highBoth reports identify insufficient ambulance resources as creating a risk that patients needing urgent transfer cannot be moved in time. The earlier report focuses on overall resource shortages and capacity‑management plan usage, while the later report highlights the consequence for urgent transfers of acutely ill patients.
Peter Scott · 26 May 2016
“I was advised that EMAS has had to invoke such a Plan (to at least level 3) for 9 out of the last 12 months.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Gordon Gillott · 4 Feb 2020
“there is a risk of future death if urgent transfers are not available to acutely ill patients due to resourcing issues.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Stated action in the response to the earlier report
“The need for an urgent review of resources to reduce the risk of future deaths”
Stated action
“In 2015/16, the trust carried out a significant recruitment campaign and educated 350 whole time equivalent frontline posts.”
What happened next: Evidence found that the action was carried out
The trust announced plans to recruit over 350 staff to improve patient care and staff morale, citing £5m of additional investment for new posts.
“The trust's "turnaround plan" lists measures including recruiting more paramedics, tackling sickness and restructuring management.”
“The trust said it planned to recruit 82 specialist paramedics, 149 paramedics, 24 emergency medical technicians and 96 emergency care assistants.”
“The recruitment drive, in addition to reducing staff sickness and its spending on private ambulances, would enable it to provide the equivalent of an extra 25 of its own double-staffed ambulances, available around the clock,”
Stated action · timescale: 2016/17
“EMAS has taken the CQC findings seriously and value the additional support from other NHS organisations following the CQC Quality Summit. With their input EMAS can progress areas that cannot be fixed quickly, or that are not within EMAS' immediate control.”
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
- Each report's concerns were extracted by Nemotron 3 Nano on Nebius Token Factory, each with a quote copied from the report.
- Concerns from reports to East Midlands Ambulance Service at least six months apart were compared by meaning (Qwen3 embeddings) and wording (TF-IDF).
- The closest pairs were judged by Nemotron 3 Super with reasoning on. Only identical or closely related, with confidence of at least 0.70, are shown.
- Every quote was checked by code as an exact substring of the original text. Names of staff and family are redacted, and the deceased are named by report title only.
| Link | Meaning | Wording | Judge | Coroner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 → 2020 | 0.77 | 0.09 | Closely related · 0.90 | different |
Judge model: nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b. How Nemotron did the work · Full methodology.
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Other chains for East Midlands Ambulance Service
This shows that a similar concern was raised again after an earlier report. It does not say why, and it is not a finding about any organisation or person. To report an error, see the corrections route.