Ambulance service apologises for covering up paramedics’ mistakes

Whistleblowers say North East Ambulance Service managers kept inconvenient facts from coroner

An ambulance service in north-east England has apologised to bereaved relatives after covering up mistakes made by paramedics when responding to patients who later died.

The chief executive of the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) offered her unreserved apologies" for historic failings" after whistleblowers told the Sunday Times that managers filtered out inconvenient facts from incident reports before they were sent to the coroner, in order to present paramedics in a more flattering light.

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