South West Ambulances Attend Almost 100 Wrong Addresses

[RobBrady]

When an ambulance turns up at the wrong destination, it is often the satnav that is blamed. Figures just released appear to tell a different story.

Out of approximately half a million calls to The South Western Ambulance NHS Trust in 2013, only five errors where the ambulance was directed to the wrong location were attributed to satnavs.

Ambulances attended an incorrect address 94 times last year, but on 33 occasions the emergency service was given the incorrect details by the caller and 28 were due to call handlers.

A further 28 attendance errors were left unexplained.

Although five errors were blamed on satnavs, it does beg the question whether the figure was in fact higher when paper maps were relied on.

The trust, which is working to improve its systems, commented "Taking a 999 call can be very distressing and it can sometimes be very difficult to get the address for our call handlers. We're introducing refresher training. We are using some of the occasions where possibly an address has been inaccurate as a learning basis for our staff."

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Robert Brady

[sussamb]

I wonder whether they work differently to others then? First thing that happens when you call our Control is that if you call from a landline the address automatically populates, so always best to use a landline when you can. I can't recall more than a couple of incidents in the last 5 years when I've been directed to the wrong address.

What is really more of an issue is that these days you don't often stay in your local area, so there's no local knowledge any more. That used to make a big difference in finding the locations that weren't correctly identified by satnav, or by the caller (particularly with RTCs) or enabled us to get there more quickly as we knew the shortcuts in 'our' area.

[aj2052]

sussamb said:

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