Desperate sufferers flip to £99-an-hour non-public ambulances | UK | News | EUROtoday

Patients are turning to a personal Uber-style ambulance service as NHS response occasions stay dangerously greater than targets.

FlashAid is the UK’s first app that enables customers to ebook an ambulance with a promise it should arrive in beneath half-hour.

Customers can subscribe to the service for as little as £2.99 a month, then pay a hard and fast payment of £295 (or barely much less for premium subscribers) for a house evaluation and remedy.

If sufferers have to go to hospital, they’re charged an extra £99 per hour on the finish of their trip.

FlashAid companions with non-public ambulance providers and might transport individuals to NHS or non-public hospitals.

It launched a pilot service in west London and the Thames Valley in December and plans to roll out its service nationwide.

The firm’s Maxim Korotich advised the Daily Mail demand for his service “speaks for itself” and FlashAid usually will get to sufferers “much faster than the NHS”.

NHS targets say ambulances ought to reply to class two calls, together with coronary heart assaults and strokes, inside half-hour.

They took a mean of 47 minutes and 26 seconds in December, well being service information exhibits.

Hospitals stay beneath intense strain with greater than 98,000 sufferers on wards final week – the best up to now this winter.

Professor Julian Redhead, NHS nationwide medical director for pressing and emergency care, warned this week that hospitals have been “close to full” with 1000’s of beds taken up by these with viruses.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting stated sufferers and workers have been “facing unacceptable conditions in hospitals up and down the country”.

He added: “It will take time to fix the NHS but with investment and proper reform, we can make our health service fit for the future and make sure that annual winter pressures do not automatically lead to an annual winter crisis.”