EMAS are fined £3.5m for missing key targets

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) has been fined £3.5 million after failing to meet response time targets for a third consecutive year.

The penalty was imposed by NHS Erewash Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), the lead commissioning co-ordinator, which now oversees the performance of EMAS after the trust met only one of the two national standards required.

The A8 measure, which requires the ambulance service to get a response to 75 per cent of all immediately life threatening calls within eight minutes was achieved but the category A19 performance, which requires the trust to get an ambulance to 95 per cent of patients in 19 minutes fell short at 91.85 per cent.

Rakesh Marwaha, Chief Officer of NHS Erewash CCG, said: “Clearly there is still work to do to ensure that EMAS achieve the response standards required.”