Patients in Angus are having to wait over 12 minutes for an ambulance to arrive if they have a life-threatening condition.
New figures show that in 2021/22, it took 12 minutes and five seconds on average for an ambulance to get to a patient in the most serious “code purple” category.
The target is eight minutes.
Waiting time targets missed in Tayside
The data also shows patients in Perth and Kinross waited 10 minutes and 51 seconds for a response to a code purple case, and in Fife they waited nine minutes and eight seconds.
All of these waiting times are above the national average of eight minutes and 52 seconds.
The Scottish Ambulance Service defines code purple as “our most critically ill patients”.
These are patients who have a 10% or more chance of having a cardiac arrest, which is when the heart suddenly stops pumping blood and starving the brain of oxygen.
This causes the patient to fall unconscious and stop breathing.
Around 53% of code purple patients are experiencing cardiac arrest.
Despite the high waiting times elsewhere in Tayside, the response times in Dundee were one of the best in the country – in the city ambulances arrived for code purple cases within six minutes and 18 seconds.
Other ambulance waiting times in Angus for 2021/22 were 14 minutes and 44 seconds for code red, 24 minutes and 37 seconds for code amber, and 68 minutes and 17 seconds for code yellow.
Health secretary should go, say Lib Dems
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, who obtained the data, says the government must take urgent action to deal with this “healthcare crisis”.
He said: “People in life-threatening situations need to know that someone will be there to help them when they need it.
“Tragically and despite the best efforts of hard-pressed paramedics, all across Scotland, this is simply not happening.”
He says it is “unforgivable” for the SNP to blame the ambulance waiting times on the pandemic, as the former chief executive of NHS Scotland Paul Gray said the “pressure cooker crisis” would have happened regardless.
Mr Cole-Hamilton is now calling for the health secretary to resign.
He said: “Anyone can see this is likely to be one of the hardest winters the NHS has ever faced.
“Staff are already overwhelmed and patients are already suffering.
“The Scottish Government has continuously ignored the warnings of ambulance staff.
“The health secretary must fundamentally change his approach and get control of the crisis, otherwise he will need to go because patients and staff have been taken for granted for far too long.”
Additional ambulance staff hired
The Scottish Ambulance Service says its latest statistics show the median response time to its most serious cases is currently seven minutes and 13 seconds.
A spokesperson added the 30-day survival rate is also at its highest ever level.
They said: “The response times quoted are averages and will include calls which have started as a lower call category, for example amber or yellow, and were then subsequently upgraded.
“We continually look for opportunities to improve our response times and we have recently recruited 540 extra frontline staff and are working closely with hospitals which experience delays in accepting ambulance patients.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Government added: “Patient safety remains our priority and we apologise to anyone who has experienced a long wait.
“Despite a rise in demand for higher acuity calls, the ambulance service responded to over 68% of their highest priority calls in under 10 minutes and over 99% in under 30 minutes in 2021/22.”