"only seven to 10% of calls to its control room are genuine, life-threatening emergencies." well, maybe so, when I rang up after slipping on the stairs and breaking my tibia and fibula I wasn't in imminent danger of dying, but I hope they're not suggesting I should have hobbled half a mile to my GP's surgery (since moved a mile away to a super-duper new three-practices-in-one health centre)! My next door neighbour got carted off in an ambulance shortly before that. He later told me that the surgeon asked him if he realised how lucky he was - only about 3% of people with his complaint (leaking femoral artery) live long enough to reach the operating theatre, apparently. The surgeon also apologised for opening him up from the throat to the upper leg - "when you came in we knew what was wrong with you, but not where!" Strangely, our local hospital has since been rated one of the worst in the country, though we've got no complaints about the way we were treated. I wonder if the nurse who was bumping off elderly patients she viewed as bed-blockers affected the ratings....