Wolverhampton home calls ambulance service 291 times in one year
Almost 300 calls were made to paramedics from a single home in just one year, it has been revealed.
Figures show that West Midlands Ambulance Service received 291 calls – either 999 or 101 – from the residential address in the WV10 area of Wolverhampton in 2016. A patient was taken to hospital on 23 occasions.
The service also took 248 calls from a Tipton address, with a patient transported by ambulance from there on six occasions.
Elsewhere in the Black Country, 203 calls were made from one address in Bilston, 156 came from an address in West Bromwich and 154 from an address in Walsall.
All the calls were made from residential properties, according to the ambulance service.
The most calls in the region – 492 – came from a home in Birmingham.
There were also two addresses – both in the WV10 area of Wolverhampton – that made 197 calls and 172 respectively. In Shropshire, an address in Shrewsbury made 251 calls, with 132 coming from a property in Telford.
The ambulance service said that the trust is aware of ‘high volume service users’, and puts in place ‘care packages’ to find solutions to combat the issue.
Spokesperson Claire Brown said: “The trust cannot comment on individual cases due to patient confidentiality.
“However, around the region the trust is aware of a number of high volume service users.
“West Midlands Ambulance Service works with the local health economy and social services to put in place care packages that are designed to find alternative solutions for individuals who are frequent 999 users.”
The overall number of calls to the ambulance service from single addresses across the region has gone up compared to 2015.
Then the highest amount of incidents reported from one address in the Black Country came in Walsall – with 197.
There were 165 from another Walsall address, as well as two properties in Wolverhampton, with 158 and 135 calls made, and 132 from an address in Tipton.
Two properties in Birmingham made 156 and 139 calls respectively, while in Shropshire figures show 203 calls from a Shrewsbury address and 188 from one in Market Drayton.
The data, obtained by the Express & Star, comes after separate figures revealed call handlers with the West Midlands Ambulance Service received almost 2,000 abusive calls between 2013 and 2016.
Figures revealed hundreds of verbal attacks across the UK in the past three years including threats to kill, and racist and sexual slurs.
It caused union chiefs to call for harsher penalties to protect ambulance control room workers from the abusive callers.
