AN emergency ambulance system concentrating the response time target on immediately life-threatening ‘red’ calls, has been formally adopted in Wales.

The new clinical response model, trialled for 17 months, has brought big improvements in emergency response times.

Health secretary Vaughan Gething has made it official following a positive independent appraisal which he said vindicated the “bold step” of introducing the new system. The appraisal concluded it was “appropriate and the right thing to do”.

Sixty-five per cent of ‘red’ calls should receive an on-scene response inside eight minutes. Since the trial began, in October 2015, the target has been met every month. In Gwent it has been missed on just occasions.

The system discards the historic eight-minute response time target for all but those incidents deemed immediately life threatening. This means only around four per cent of all ambulance 999 calls are now measured against that target.

The system’s supporters say this focuses resources on the most serious cases - but there is concern that the parameters are too narrow.

Welsh Conservative shadow health secretary Angela Burns said that formally adopting a model allowing some 96 per cent of all ambulance calls to go unmeasured, betrays a “staggering lack of accountability” by the Welsh Government.

“The worst feature by far of this model is that many cases, including heart attacks and strokes, do not currently qualify for the most urgent response category unless patients have stopped breathing or their hearts have stopped beating,” she added.

“If the new model is to truly work for patients then heart attacks and strokes must be reinstated in the urgent response category.”

The system also has amber (serious, but not immediately life-threatening) and green (non-urgent) calls categories, and the evaluation acknowledges a need to review the former.

“There is concern this group is too large and not sufficiently discriminatory in terms of prioritising patients with high acuity illness, and that for some calls this is resulting in unacceptably long waits,” it concludes.

Meanwhile, Mr Gething is determined to press ahead.

“It is crucial we now grasp the opportunity and continue to lead the way internationally in this important area,” he said.