A CONTROVERSIAL decision to introduce an unauthorised experiment that led to ambulance delays for up to 20,000 patients was not made to "fiddle figures", an NHS boss has insisted.

South East Coast Ambulance Service chief executive Paul Sutton said the 111 pilot brought in last winter was purely for care and safety issues.

He told members of the West Sussex health and adult social care select committee on Friday the service was under a huge amount of pressure when the pilot was introduced last winter.

The main causes were long delays for ambulances and crews in hospital accident and emergency departments, which meant there were fewer paramedics available to answer other emergency calls.

Mr Sutton told the committee that at some points, there were queues of seriously ill patients waiting on the 999 system for an ambulance to become available.

In one case a patient who was suffering breathing problems was waiting 39 minutes for an ambulance to be despatched.

Mr Sutton said some staff believed some 999 patients who had been transferred over from the non-emergency NHS 111 service were not being triaged accurately and may not have needed an ambulance.

National rules state 75 per cent of Category A Red 2 calls should have an emergency response at the scene within eight minutes.

These calls are for conditions regarded as serious such as strokes or fits.

Under the project, the ambulance trust gave itself up to 10 extra minutes to reassess what type of advice or treatment patients needed, and whether an ambulance was really necessary.

However, patients were kept in the dark about the scheme, as were 111 call handlers and the trust's board.

Health sector regulator Monitor has said the project, which involved the ambulance trust changing how it handled some NHS 111 calls, was poorly handled.

It is now running an investigation into what happened.

Mr Sutton told the committee he accepted proper procedures and governance had not been followed and lessons had been learned.

He said the trust was working on several action plans to deal with the issues raised.

He said: “Patient safety is my priority and also the priority of all my staff.

“With the project were trying to protect patients but not necessarily handling it in the right way.

“The project will not be running this winter but we do have good people with good plans to keep the public safe.”

The committee asked the trust to provide it will full details of its investigation into the pilot once it was allowed to by Monitor.

It also asked for further details about the handover times and delays ambulance services were experiencing at hospital trusts.