Part of an ambulance services’ funding will be withheld by the local clinical commissioning group after failing to meet response targets.
East of England Ambulance Service has not met national targets for a year, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical commissioning group (CCG) has claimed.
The CCG has decided to withhold 2% of the contract from the service, which covers Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.
Part of an ambulance services’ funding will be withheld by the local clinical commissioning group after failing to meet response targets.
East of England Ambulance Service has not met national targets for a year, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical commissioning group (CCG) has claimed.
The CCG has decided to withhold 2% of the contract from the service, which covers Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.
The 2% cutback had been in place since December, until such time as issues at the service could be resolved.
But a report released last year showed the service failed to reach the target of getting to 95% of patients in life-threatening situations within 19 minutes.
In October alone, 1,226 handovers were delayed by more than 30 minutes, and in 226 cases patient handovers took 60 minutes longer than they were supposed to.
A statement from Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG said: "The national NHS contract has a financial consequence for ambulance trusts who fail to meet the agreed national standards for response times across an entire year.
"This equates to 2% of the contract value and unfortunately the East of England Ambulance Service Trust has fallen short of these standards and this consequence must be applied.
"NHS Commissioners are working closely with ambulance trust executives to ensure that the issues that are causing the deterioration in response times are addressed and, where necessary, reinvest these resources to improve care."
Late last year West Norfolk CCG revealed it is monitoring handover times at the East of England Ambulance Service.
West Norfolk CCG said it would continue to monitor response times until the service is “consistently working to an acceptable standard”.
