I've not died - my plan was to blog at least every second day, but that has gone for a burton as my internet connection is up and down more times than a *insert metaphor*. I'm trying to get it fixed, but of course that means some time after the bloody waste of time that is Christmas.

-----

I must admit that I saw this on the BBC, and thought it sounded somewhat familiar.

The government has been urged to review its targets for ambulances responding to 999 calls, following claims that patient care is being affected.

The NHS Confederation, which acts for ambulance trusts, said that targets can produce "unintended consequences" and "may not be benefitting patients."

Ahem .

However Mr Edwards added: "Any narrow target which focuses on one measure does have the potential for producing unintended consequences and maybe not benefitting patients.

"A solution might be to move to a measure in which we measure the outcome of what's done rather than just the process, so what was the outcome for the patient? Did they receive the emergency care that they should have done?

"And if we could move to a situation which was better at measuring that, then we might avoid some of the unintended consequences of these very tight timescale based targets."

He was backed by academic Janette Turner, from the Sheffield University's Medical Care Research Unit.

Cough.

She told the BBC: "The only proven clinical value of an eight-minute response is for patients with cardiac arrest, where a really fast response really can make the difference between whether they survive or whether they die, but for the other patients there's no proven relationship between how quickly the ambulance gets there and whether they survive.

"The problem that creates for ambulance services is if they get there in seven minutes and the patient dies, they have succeeded because they have met a target and if they get there in nine minutes and the patient lives, they have failed because they haven't reached the target."

How's 2004 for warning people about this?