A MOMENT OF CLARITY...

I have been a regular visitor to the Royal Gwent to visit a close relative at various times pretty much every day over the last three weeks. This means that I have seen the hospital (and its surround) both exceptionally busy and reasonably quiet (trust me reasonably quiet is a relative term). Whilst visiting I have seen the ambulances stacked up to drop off patients and parked all over the place either waiting for calls or simply waiting for the next busy day.  

Stacked up ambulances at a hospital near you!

Now we used to have a network ambulance stations (and small hospitals) scattered across much of our country, but, most of them appear as far as I can see to have been sold off to cash in on housing boom prior to the turn of the millennium. This is no doubt a contributory factor to the problem of poor ambulance response times. Some three weeks ago it took the best part of three hours for an ambulance to arrive for a close relative and that was in the middle of our country's third largest city - heaven help if you life in a rural area or the valleys.

What might make sense would be for ambulances to be based out at our (surviving) network of fire stations, in a perfect world along with some of the our Police to be based with them. One result of the Con Dem inspired public sector cuts will be a sell off of police stations across our country so as sure as day follows night, they will need somewhere to go. Ideally a network of dispersed emergency service stations would help to ensure that response times and perhaps lead to better emergency service co-ordination  - just a thought!